Spend the morning reading Philip Pullman. He says storytelling is the School of Morals in our world. Any theocracy, particularly any monotheism, is not democratic enough to let truth emerge. In the shifting metaphors of story we invite the debate, the ambiguity, the struggle for meaning that helps us answer really important questions: what are we to make of the lives we have been given? Not why are we here, because really, who can answer that, but what is the best way to take advantage of the fact that we are here? How should we go about the business of being human?
Category: Other Writers
David Handler, who wrote Lemony Snickett, said he has come to appreciate the times when things are going really badly, because he knows that pretty soon they are going to get good again. And he gets there by just pushing through, and doing crap writing.
Rick Riordan says the only way to write is to write the story that must be written, that insists on being written, that writes itself. I imagine myself saying back, “That’s not how it works for me. The more I wait for the perfect story, the less I am able to write. I have to choose any story, and make it good enough.”
Julia Cameron manages to make everything sound portentous. She goes for a walk in a park and an eagle soars down and announces that she needs to write musicals, so she does. I don’t have any eagles. I just wake up cranky.