
Variant: When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Variant: When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 32 : Morning
Context: One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close.
Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
"Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories."
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
“Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.”
Jordan Belfort played by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
On becoming a writer in “Esperanza Spalding Talks Recording an Album in 77 Hours, Sexism in Music & Nicki Minaj” https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7973640/esperanza-spalding-77-hours-livestream-album-interview in Billboard (2017 Sep 22)
Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)