A friend who is also involved in NaNoWriMo sent me this quote from Sylvia Plath: "Any by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise."
For a woman raised in the early '50s with the restrictions about being a "good girl" that society was laying on us [I am squarely of her generation], the operative word here is "guts". Most writers have the imagination although they may be afraid to improvise -- a matter of guts again. Nerve could be substituted for guts, if you're a guy you might substitute balls. She's talking about taking chances and not needing to be liked, not caring about the disapproval that will rain down on the writer's head -- far more so back then! -- when writing about a socially unacceptable subject.
Now if a writer reads widely s/he will see that indeed Sylvia was right, everything is writable and someone has had nerve/guts/balls enough to write about it. What one wants is to do it better, more honestly, or more specifically to a situation. There comes the imagination, with skill holding up the umbrella that will deflect the storm of indignation of the good manners police.
1 comment:
It's great you're so into writing and sharing your skills and tidbits. It's really been helpful to me.
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