Saturday, July 04, 2009

This is brilliant for writers everywhere

A friend from another site (a secret site...oooooo eerrrrrr) shared this wonderful writing quote by Elizabeth Gilbert with me today.
Given my self pitying drone below, I felt it important to share this and to read it over and over.


As for discipline – it’s important, but sort of over-rated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. You will make vows: “I’m going to write for an hour every day,” and then you won’t do it. You will think: “I suck, I’m such a failure. I’m washed-up.” Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness (which comes from a place of kind and encouraging and motherly love). The other thing to realize is that all writers think they suck. When I was writing “Eat, Pray, Love”, I had just as a strong a mantra of THIS SUCKS ringing through my head as anyone does when they write anything. But I had a clarion moment of truth during the process of that book. One day, when I was agonizing over how utterly bad my writing felt, I realized: “That’s actually not my problem.” The point I realized was this – I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write."

3 comments:

Sarah said...

I like that. Thanks.

Liz said...

Love it! cheers ; )

Peter said...

Too true, I thought exactly those things last night at about 11:30pm chewing the end of my fountain pen wondering what to write next... and then thinking... what the hell am I doing this for... still in the words of Winston Churchill I shall "keep buggering on..."

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