Writing Quote of the Week (A Few Days Late)
The mega-article on global warming ruined me for any other writing (or any other thing, like thinking) during the time I was completing it, but here’s my quote offering, by My Favorite Writer In The World, Ellen Gilchrist :
"I am doing the best I can to teach them but there is really very little to teach about writing. All I can do is edit their work to make the writing more beautiful and seductive, and tell them over and over again the few, simple strategies I know. I learned most of them from a book by Ernest Hemingwaythat I assign to students every semester. It is called On Writing…..It was in that book that I learned to quit each day while I still knew what to write next. I learned to be satisfied by four pages of good, well-written prose and then go out and live my real life and be fresh when I come back to the piece the next morning…"
Ellen Gilchrist, The Writing Life. (And, for the record, I’ve been off living my real life for a few days. Though in truth, I don’t think there is a real life apart from writing.)
