Paul Auster in an interview for Believer Magazine (talking with the author, Jonatham Lethem) about writing:

PA: You try to surprise yourself. You want to go against what you've done before. You want to burn up and destroy all your previous work; you want to reinvent yourself with every project.Once you fall into habits, I think, you're dead as an artist. You have to challenge yourself and never rest on your laurels, never think about what you've done in the past. Just say, that's done, now I'm tackling something else. It's certain that the world's large enough and interesting enough to take a different approach each time you sit down to write about it.

JL: Anyway, your voice is going to be helplessly your own. And so the books will be united despite your attempts to ignore your own earlier work.

PA: Exactly, because all your attempts to flee from yourself are useless. All you discover is yourself and your old obsessions. All the maniacal repetitions of how you think. But you try. And I think there's some dignity in that attempt.

JL: I'm laughing, because now, as I'm about to begin a new novel at last, the only thing I'm certain of are the exclusions, the things I'll refuse to do again.

...

PA: Well, that's good. When you become aware of what your limits have been so far, then you;re able to expand them. And every artist has limits. No one can do everything. It's impossible. What's beautiful about art is that it circumscribes a space, a physical and mental space. If you try to put the entire world into every page you turn out chaos. Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

and a little later
:

PA: "I think the glory of the novel is that you're open to everything and anything that exists or has existed in the world. I don't have any proscriptions. I don't say: "This is not allowed because..."

What is said about the process of writing above is true of the way we ought to lead our lives in general too, I think.

I read the above interview with Auster and many other great interviews with writers in The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers. I am reading interviews with Paul Auster, John Banville, Haruki Murakami, Grace Paley, George Saunders, Marilynne Robinson, Ian McEwan, Tobias Wolff, & maybe Joan Didion but there are 24 such interviews. A book worth buying! (I am a big fan of Paris Review's collections of interviews with authors and poets and I'd put this collection right up there with those books.)

Neil Gaiman's Advice to Writer: "Read a lot and live..... Go do stuff. Go get your heart broken and then come back and write some more"



Go listen to the sentence about "like bricks onto a wall" too... pretty basic stuff but so tough to do, no?

Also, listen to this 2006 speech he gave in Berkeley on a book tour for Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders....

..and his recent interview on Colbert Nation:

Neil Gaiman

Incidentally, I have not read any of Gaiman's work though I have heard many friends rave. Maybe one of these days, I'll start.

Also, see this lovely short clip for Blueberry Girl, written and read by Neil Gaiman.
 

Lovely! He apparently wrote this for or Tash, Tori Amos's daughter (who is also Gaiman's god-daughter).

Loved these lines about poetry by Kay Ryan, who was appointed the Library of Congress's sixteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 2008, in an interview in Paris Review.

Interviewer: Do you feel that part of the laureate job is to convince the reading public that poetry is useful?

KR: It's poetry's uselessness that excites me. Its hopelessness. All this tal of usefulness makes me feel I've suddenly been shanghaied into the helping professions. Prose is practical language. Conversation is practical language. Let them handle the usefulness jobs. But of course, poetry has its balms. It makes us less lonely by one. It makes us have more room inside ourselves. But it's paralyzing to think of usefulness and poetry in the same breath.

And so it goes. My daily poetry tweets over on twitter are anything but useful but now I know they serve a purpose - they are a balm which help me make room within myself. 

From later in the interview, this lovely excerpt:

I: Why do you think writing attracted you?

KR: It's a way of thinking unlike any other. Brodsky considers poetry a great accelerator of the mind and I agree. Thinking takes place in language, and it's hard to say whether the language is creating the thinking or the thinkng is creating the language. If I don't write poetry, in the profoundest way I have no way to think.

I: How do you find the subject in a poem

KR: I don't know if I'm interested in combating an idea or just loosening it up. You have to make some room for your mind. You have to open something up. And you can't just slam it from the other side. You can't say, That's not right. This is right. You start fluffing it. You open up the picture, so you can know two things at once.

I love reading interviews with writers and poets! Love the way they think. Love the way they phrase answers. Delectable bits abound! (I flitted between "Poetry has its balms" to "poetry a great accelerator of the mind" to "know two things at once" for this post title!) 

Go pick up the Winter 2008 Paris Review issue and read the interview. Or, if you cannot get your hands on that issue, go to the Paris Review Interview Archive Index and enjoy interviews with the masters of the past. (Past interviews are archived for free as pdf files. (Thank you, Paris Review, for sharing these gems for free.)

One of my favorite authors, John Updike, writes about the challenges facing an aging writer:

I can appreciate the advantages, for a writer, of youth and obscurity. You are not yet typecast. You can take a cold view of the entire literary scene. You are full of material -- your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation -- when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions and emotions from the first 20 years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings ...

A few images, a few memorable acquaintances, a few cherished phrases, circle around the aging writer's head like gnats as he strolls through the summertime woods at gloaming. He sits down before the word processor's humming, expectant screen, facing the strong possibility that he has already expressed what he is struggling to express again ...

With ominous frequency, I can't think of the right word. I know that there is a word; I can visualize the exact shape it occupies in the jigsaw puzzle of the English language. But the word itself, with its precise edges and unique tint of meaning, hangs on the misty rim of consciousness ...

When, against my better judgment, I glance back at my prose from 20 or 30 years ago, the quality I admire and fear to have lost is its carefree bounce, its snap, its exuberant air of slight excess. The author, in his boyish innocence, is calling, like the sorcerer's apprentice, upon unseen powers -- the prodigious potential of this flexible language's vast vocabulary. Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling into your ear.

An aging writer wonders if he has lost the ability to visualize a completed work, in its complex spatial relations ...

If only I could write like this...at any age!

One of my favorite authors, John Updike, writes about the challenges facing an aging writer:

I can appreciate the advantages, for a writer, of youth and obscurity. You are not yet typecast. You can take a cold view of the entire literary scene. You are full of material -- your family, your friends, your region of the country, your generation -- when it is fresh and seems urgently worth communicating to readers. No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions and emotions from the first 20 years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings ...

A few images, a few memorable acquaintances, a few cherished phrases, circle around the aging writer's head like gnats as he strolls through the summertime woods at gloaming. He sits down before the word processor's humming, expectant screen, facing the strong possibility that he has already expressed what he is struggling to express again ...

With ominous frequency, I can't think of the right word. I know that there is a word; I can visualize the exact shape it occupies in the jigsaw puzzle of the English language. But the word itself, with its precise edges and unique tint of meaning, hangs on the misty rim of consciousness ...

When, against my better judgment, I glance back at my prose from 20 or 30 years ago, the quality I admire and fear to have lost is its carefree bounce, its snap, its exuberant air of slight excess. The author, in his boyish innocence, is calling, like the sorcerer's apprentice, upon unseen powers -- the prodigious potential of this flexible language's vast vocabulary. Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight; it should feel like a voice tumbling into your ear.

An aging writer wonders if he has lost the ability to visualize a completed work, in its complex spatial relations ...

If only I could write like this...at any age!

Read some essays from Amy Lowell's book of essays, Poetry and Poets. Some of the interesting ones can be read online for free (see links below) and so I will not excerpt from them but here is an excerpt from an essay called: The process of making poetry.

Amy Lowell, in writing about the process of making poetry and the role of the (sub)conscious arrival of the poem ("It came to me") writes:

Sometimes the external stimulus which has produced a poem is known or can be traced. It may be a sight, a sound, a thought, or an emotion. Sometimes the consciousness has no record of the initial impulse, which has either been forgotten or springs from a deep, unrealized memory. But whatever it is, emotion, apprehended or hidden, is a part of it, for only emotion can rouse the subconscious into action.

...

The subconscious is, however, a most temperamental ally. Often he will strike work at some critical point and not another word is to be got out of him. Here is where the conscious training of the poet comes in, for he must fill in what the subconscious has left, and fill it in as much in the key of the rest as possible. ...

Sometimes the sly subconscious partner will take pity on the struggling poet and return to his assistance; sometimes he will have nothing to do with that particular passage again. This is the reason that a poet must be both born and made. He must be born with a subconscious factory always working for him or he can never be a poet at all, and he must have knowledge and talent enouogh to 'putty' up his holes - to use Mr. Grave's expression. Let no one undervalue this process of puttying; it is a condition of good poetry.

I do believe that a poet should know all he can. No subject is alien to him, and the profounder his knowledge in any direction, the more depth will there be to his poetry. I believe he should be thoroughly grounded in both the old and the new poetic forms, but I am firmly convinced that he must never respect tradition above his intuitive self. Let him be sure of his own sincerity above all, let him bow to no public acclaim, however alluring, and then let him write with all the courage what his subconscious mind suggests to him.

There is much else to treasure in the essays, some of which can be read here.

Read some essays from Amy Lowell's book of essays, Poetry and Poets. Some of the interesting ones can be read online for free (see links below) and so I will not excerpt from them but here is an excerpt from an essay called: The process of making poetry.

Amy Lowell, in writing about the process of making poetry and the role of the (sub)conscious arrival of the poem ("It came to me") writes:

Sometimes the external stimulus which has produced a poem is known or can be traced. It may be a sight, a sound, a thought, or an emotion. Sometimes the consciousness has no record of the initial impulse, which has either been forgotten or springs from a deep, unrealized memory. But whatever it is, emotion, apprehended or hidden, is a part of it, for only emotion can rouse the subconscious into action.

...

The subconscious is, however, a most temperamental ally. Often he will strike work at some critical point and not another word is to be got out of him. Here is where the conscious training of the poet comes in, for he must fill in what the subconscious has left, and fill it in as much in the key of the rest as possible. ...

Sometimes the sly subconscious partner will take pity on the struggling poet and return to his assistance; sometimes he will have nothing to do with that particular passage again. This is the reason that a poet must be both born and made. He must be born with a subconscious factory always working for him or he can never be a poet at all, and he must have knowledge and talent enouogh to 'putty' up his holes - to use Mr. Grave's expression. Let no one undervalue this process of puttying; it is a condition of good poetry.

I do believe that a poet should know all he can. No subject is alien to him, and the profounder his knowledge in any direction, the more depth will there be to his poetry. I believe he should be thoroughly grounded in both the old and the new poetic forms, but I am firmly convinced that he must never respect tradition above his intuitive self. Let him be sure of his own sincerity above all, let him bow to no public acclaim, however alluring, and then let him write with all the courage what his subconscious mind suggests to him.

There is much else to treasure in the essays, some of which can be read here.

Marilynne Robinson, whose recent novel Home made the 2008 National Book Award Finalists list last week talks about the development of character in writing in an interview in The Paris Review this month.

In the development of every character there’s a kind of emotional entanglement that occurs. The characters that interest me are the ones that seem to pose questions in my own thinking. The minute that you start thinking about someone in the whole circumstance of his life to the extent that you can, he becomes mysterious, immediately.

And this later in the interview:

I feel strongly that action is generated out of character. And I don’t give anything a higher priority than character. The one consistent thing among my novels is that there’s a character who stays in my mind. It’s a character with complexity that I want to know better.

Couple more excerpts:

In your second novel, Gilead, the protagonist is a pastor, John Ames. Do you think of yourself as a religious writer?


ROBINSON: I don’t like categories like religious and not religious. As soon as religion draws a line around itself it becomes falsified. It seems to me that anything that is written compassionately and perceptively probably satisfies every definition of religious whether a writer intends it to be religious or not.

....*.....

Ames says that in our everyday world there is “more beauty than our eyes can bear.” He’s living in America in the late 1950s. Would he say that today?

ROBINSON: You have to have a certain detachment in order to see beauty for yourself rather than something that has been put in quotation marks to be understood as “beauty.” Think about Dutch painting, where sunlight is falling on a basin of water and a woman is standing there in the clothes that she would wear when she wakes up in the morning—that beauty is a casual glimpse of something very ordinary. Or a painting like Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef, where a simple piece of meat caught his eye because there was something mysterious about it. You also get that in Edward Hopper: Look at the sunlight! or Look at the human being! These are instances of genius. Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that. And it’s not Versailles. It’s a brick wall with a ray of sunlight falling on it.

At the same time, there has always been a basic human tendency toward a dubious notion of beauty. Think about cultures that rarify themselves into courts in which people paint themselves with lead paint and get dumber by the day, or women have ribs removed to have their waists cinched tighter. There’s no question that we have our versions of that now. The most destructive thing we can do is act as though this is some sign of cultural, spiritual decay rather than humans just acting human, which is what we’re doing most of the time.

Marilynne Robinson, whose recent novel Home made the 2008 National Book Award Finalists list last week talks about the development of character in writing in an interview in The Paris Review this month.

In the development of every character there’s a kind of emotional entanglement that occurs. The characters that interest me are the ones that seem to pose questions in my own thinking. The minute that you start thinking about someone in the whole circumstance of his life to the extent that you can, he becomes mysterious, immediately.

And this later in the interview:

I feel strongly that action is generated out of character. And I don’t give anything a higher priority than character. The one consistent thing among my novels is that there’s a character who stays in my mind. It’s a character with complexity that I want to know better.

Couple more excerpts:

In your second novel, Gilead, the protagonist is a pastor, John Ames. Do you think of yourself as a religious writer?

ROBINSON: I don’t like categories like religious and not religious. As soon as religion draws a line around itself it becomes falsified. It seems to me that anything that is written compassionately and perceptively probably satisfies every definition of religious whether a writer intends it to be religious or not.

....*.....

Ames says that in our everyday world there is “more beauty than our eyes can bear.” He’s living in America in the late 1950s. Would he say that today?

ROBINSON: You have to have a certain detachment in order to see beauty for yourself rather than something that has been put in quotation marks to be understood as “beauty.” Think about Dutch painting, where sunlight is falling on a basin of water and a woman is standing there in the clothes that she would wear when she wakes up in the morning—that beauty is a casual glimpse of something very ordinary. Or a painting like Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef, where a simple piece of meat caught his eye because there was something mysterious about it. You also get that in Edward Hopper: Look at the sunlight! or Look at the human being! These are instances of genius. Cultures cherish artists because they are people who can say, Look at that. And it’s not Versailles. It’s a brick wall with a ray of sunlight falling on it.

At the same time, there has always been a basic human tendency toward a dubious notion of beauty. Think about cultures that rarify themselves into courts in which people paint themselves with lead paint and get dumber by the day, or women have ribs removed to have their waists cinched tighter. There’s no question that we have our versions of that now. The most destructive thing we can do is act as though this is some sign of cultural, spiritual decay rather than humans just acting human, which is what we’re doing most of the time.

More from the aforementioned interview with Jesse Ball and his wife, Þórdís Björnsdóttir:

Ball: I also favour forcefulness in writing. You have to be able to present your work with strength and hope. Some people think of poetry as being some fancy, delicate rhyme thing that doesn’t have a lot to do with them. And that is all wrong. Poetry is the most forceful and powerful use of language, if you want to write a poem and get to how you feel, getting it down, forcing it away by original means, that’s poetry. Cynicism, however, is… probably the saddest trait of our society right now. And it’s rampant.

Q: You’re waging a war on cynicism?
Ball: All cynicism does is subtract. It doesn’t add. Every single genuine endeavour goes forth despite cynicism. Even something like punk, which presents a lot of cynical ideas, is inherently hopeful, it has a deep strong hope in it’s core, and a strong spirit. As I see it, being disaffected is one thing, that’s actually hard not to be in this day and age. But being cynical is a step too far.

The interview is full of much wisdom (also see this post) -- the poet/writer Jesse Ball is not only creative but also seems wise beyond his years!

So, what is a writer's job when he puts pen to paper? Phillip Roth said it best in an interview with Paris Review in Fall 1984

The idea is to perceive your invention as a reality that can be understood as a dream. The idea is to turn flesh and blood into literary characters and literary characters; into flesh and blood.

But sometimes, like Roth himself wrote in a 1961 essay, Writing American Fiction, literature falls short.

The American writer in the middle of the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one's meager imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.

Indeed! I have lost count of the number of times I have wondered in recent days if some news item was satire from The Onion or real news! Reality makes satire and parody almost redundant. Life itself is a parody, no?

P.S. Sorry... both links in this post are subscription-only articles, which even I have not read. The quotes, which I found elsewhere, are interesting though and so I thought of blogging about them.

So, what is a writer's job when he puts pen to paper? Phillip Roth said it best in an interview with Paris Review in Fall 1984

The idea is to perceive your invention as a reality that can be understood as a dream. The idea is to turn flesh and blood into literary characters and literary characters; into flesh and blood.

But sometimes, like Roth himself wrote in a 1961 essay, Writing American Fiction, literature falls short.

The American writer in the middle of the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one's meager imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.

Indeed! I have lost count of the number of times I have wondered in recent days if some news item was satire from The Onion or real news! Reality makes satire and parody almost redundant. Life itself is a parody, no?

P.S. Sorry... both links in this post are subscription-only articles, which even I have not read. The quotes, which I found elsewhere, are interesting though and so I thought of blogging about them.

Excerpt from Contributors' Notes at the end of Best American Short Stories of 2005.

Sometimes I think all good short stories function as ghost stories, in which the people, themes, events that grip an individual writer occur again and again like a haunting. Readers, too, can be hautned by stories. As for this story, something about painting and re-painting the rooms of a newly purchased house, now that I think about it, seems like a writerly metaphor. (Or perhaps a re-writerly metaphor.) Like ghost stories, and like the act of writing - and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting - the work is as much about concealment as it is about revelation. - Kelly Link

Stone Animals by Kelly Link is one of the 4 or 5 short stories from the collection that I am yet to read. Never heard of her before .... her writing seems to have gotten some rave reviews. And her website says a new collection will be out in October.

Naah...too many things to read. But I will get to Stone Animals later this week -- a review of that particular story is here, if you are interested.

These lines are from Paul Auster's recent novel, Man in the Dark (as gleaned from a review in the WaPo):

There are many worlds, and they all run parallel to one another, worlds and anti-worlds, worlds and shadow-worlds, and each world is dreamed or imagined or written by someone in another world. Each world is the creation of a mind.

Hmm... sounds very similar (conceptually) to something I wrote recently! Here's what I wrote for the writing workshop assignment, as it read in the first draft; which I should have re-worked based on feedback but have not had the discipline to work on yet!

You begin to wonder if she was even real. When you lose track of time, memories deceive and the mind imparts a certain lucidity to our experiences that touches the innermost recesses of our being. What is real – the seen or the more deeply felt and imagined?

...

You delude yourself into believing that large streams of people’s unlived lives float around in negative space, in worlds that scientists cannot see but know exists and classify as dark matter, which is held together with dark energy. So, maybe the lives we live, the ones we remember, are illusions too? You snap out of this reverie, knowing that taking these long flights distort a man’s sense of time and memory.

The assignment was to write a short piece in the form of instructions and I somewhat overdid the use of the 'You's' in the piece! Like I said...it's only a first draft and was written in response to the assignment in short bursts over two weeks. I liked the piece (as did the class) but I *know* that some day I will cringe when I read what I wrote. I'm already cringing a little bit reading the above sentences! My apologies for subjecting the few passersby to this blog to this unseemly mess!

Have been hearing really good things about a recent book by James Wood called How Fiction Works ($14.40 only at amazon.com! already available at 40% discount from publisher's price!). If you google it, you will find many reviews of the book (for example, see links below)... but it also came highly recommended from Amit Varma, whose literary tastes I trust.

Also, in addition to Virginia Woolf's great book on the art of fiction, Mystery and Manners, which I read a chapter from recently, E.M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel is also a good book to read on the subject. And there is Francine Prose's more recent book Reading Like a Writer.

So much to read...where's the time to write! hah! :)

--
I had compiled links to reviews of Wood's book ...though instead of reading all these reviews, I'm going to try to get hold of the book and read the book itself. Be more instructive and constructive! ;)

NY Magazine
Bold Type
Newsweek
Slate
TNR
Christian Science Monitor
Independent, UK
International Herald Tribune (originally published in the NYT)
Times, UK
Salon
Guardian, UK

--
Also, I had compiled a list of reviews of another book that is also about writing (not a how-to manual but thoughts about the process of writing) - Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running . Like the Boldtype review says:

For acclaimed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, the act of running and the act of writing are inextricably linked — like two sides of the same track-shaped Mobius Strip. Murakami stresses the importance of training in both disciplines, debunking misconceptions about the writerly life as he goes.”

...

The book artfully marries two topics that many people don't often see as going together — sports and creativity. The result is a fantastic read with broad appeal; beyond just runners and writers, What I Talk About holds inspiration for anyone who's passionate about an athletic or creative endeavor.

Seems like worthwhile reading, though I do not run and since my writing workshop ended, I have gone back to my lazy ways and not attempted writing either! Its a lot of work and needs the kind of discipline that I lack! In Murakami's words:

"The whole process (of writing) — sitting at your desk, focusing your mind like a laser beam, imagining something out of a blank horizon, creating a story, selecting the right words, one by one, keeping the whole flow of the story on track — requires far more energy, over a long period, than most people ever imagine."

Like the Boldtype review says at the end:

If you're resting on your laurels — or worse yet, your daydreams — What I Talk About will come as a rousing reminder that there's no substitute for hard work. Indeed, practice makes perfect.

Hmmm.. no laurels to rest on here - just me and my daydreams! Or as a friend calls it 'khayali pulao'.

---
In any case, reviews of Murakami's include:

Economist review
New York Sun review
Bookslut review
LA Times review
Telegraph review
Herald Tribune review
Complete Review
The Slate review
Newsweek review
Guardian review
Times Online review

Though I recommend that you skip the reviews and just read the book! Or go running... get some fresh air (like I need to after being at the computer the whole day!)

I just blogged about Michael Cunningham's well-written, much-praised, and innovative and creative novel, Specimen Days.

Such a great book...so much effort... such talent...and Powell.com site says: "List Price $25.00 Your Price: $8.95." Amazon.com has it for $11.20 and through amazon marketplace, you can buy it for prices starting at $0.01 plus S&H. Sad, isn't it? Now see what I meant when I wrote this, disillusioned about writing after seeing the fate of good books in a book store.

Though, as Cunningham himself says in an interview with Charlie Rose, one writes for the joy of writing; not because one hopes to be published in the New Yorker (which Michael apparently did after many many rejections from them) or win the Pulitzer Prize.

And here is inspiration for writers from something else he says in the Rose interview about Mrs. Dalloway, shortly after comparing Virginia Woolf's art to Jim Hendrix riffing on his guitar:

"There are no uninteresting or ordinary lives; there are only inadequate ways of looking at them. If looked at with sufficient penetration and artistry, every single person alive is potentially a great figure of literature."

Speaking of Rilke quoting mammoths, here is good advice from Rilke, taken from his Letters to a Young Poet.

Write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds - wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories?

Also from the above link to the book, this quote:

Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside.

I need to buy the book (only $5.95) and read/devour it; as well as his other interestingly titled book: On Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations, which per one of the reviews at the link has this amazing quote about love.

"What ruthless magnificence and yet how terrible to ignite love; what conflagration, what disaster, what doom.To be on fire yourself, of course , if one is capable of it: that may well be worth life and death."

By the way, I found the above quote in an interesting post about writing by Austin Kleon.

No, not God but the Writer.

The writer's relation to his work must be like that of God to the Universe: omnipresent and invisible - Flaubert

I found this also at the great interview with Richard Yates, which I quoted from extensively in an earlier post.

...and "the immense mysterious power of the pointless."

Milan Kundera, in The Curtain, writes:

"All we can do in the face of the ineluctable defeat called life is to try to understand it. That -- that is the raison d'etre of the art of the novel."

"The novel alone [can] reveal the immense, mysterious power of the pointless."

Here's an excerpt from the book.

Michael Dirda at WaPo writes:

Joseph Conrad once wrote that his purpose as a novelist was simply "to make you see." According to Viktor Shklovsky -- the influential Russian formalist critic of the 1920s and '30s -- our daily, automatic routines leach all the freshness from existence, so that we no longer experience the wonder of the people and life around us. Art's purpose, consequently, is to "defamiliarize" the familiar, to shake up our dulled perceptions, to reinvest the dingy, gray and arthritic universe with richness, color, vitality.

According to Milan Kundera's similar literary theory of "the curtain," we grow up with cultural preconceptions that "pre-interpret" the world and close off various aspects of experience. He writes that "a magic curtain, woven of legends, hung before the world. Cervantes sent Don Quixote journeying and tore through the curtain. The world opened before the knight errant in all the comical nakedness of its prose." Ever since, the true novelist's ambition "is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say."

Another quote from Jane Yolen's book, Take Joy - A writer's guide to loving the craft:

Writing takes us into another, brighter, deeper, more engaging world than the world we actually live in. Even mediocre writing can do this. But good writing creates - as E. O. Doctorow has put it -- "not the fact that it's raining but the feel of being rained upon."

Great writing sets the reader down in inimitable worlds that become the reader - in two senses of the word: matching or embellishing the reader's mind, and then metamorphosing the reader by the incorporation of that world into his own.

Or as Proust put it (as quoted by Milan Kundera in The Curtain)

Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.

or in Kundera's own words:

"Against our real world, which, by its very nature, is fleeting and worthy of forgetting, works of art stand as a different world, a world that is ideal, solid, where every detail has its importance, its meaning, where everything in it -- every word, every phrase -- deserves to be unforgettable and was conceived to be such."

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The ultimate concern of the artist is not to paint mountains and clouds and trees but the air between them - Wang Wei.