“The story is always better than your ability to write it.”
Trip of a Lifetime (1999)
Context: What I always wanted to be was a magician... My real upbringing when I was a teenager was doing magic shows, all over the state, with my father and brothers. Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it. And writing is essentially a trick.
“writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all”
Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems
“In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better.”
Interview with Herbert Mitgang, "Mrs. Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles," The New York Times, (22 April 1984) http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/10/specials/lessing-puzzles.html
Context: In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?”
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 24e
Interview http://www.lordotrings.com/interview.asp with Dennis Gerrolt, first broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Now Read On" (January 1971)
Context: It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.
Variant: You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
