I’ve been reading Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life, and it’s chock-full of nuggets that inspire me to take up my pen and write, write, write. (The other part I love is that she’s unabashed about her Christianity and its influence on her writing.)
Here’s one bit I loved:
If you are an artist, regardless of your religion, everything you do is your witness. You cannot hide what you are. Emerson said, “What you are speaks so loudly over your head that I cannot hear what you say.”
And another:
The writer cannot write just when he feels like it or he won’t have anything to write with. Like the violin, he has to be constantly tuned and practiced on. This can sometimes be very hard on husband or family, but it’s absolutely essential. My family has with the utmost forbearance and patience put up with innumerable saucepans, the bottoms of which are permanently speckled from burned vegetables. Last year it was peas, and this year I seem to have switched to string beans. I not only burn dinner when I dash to the typewriter to set down just one more sentence, I’m also given to excitement and enthusiasm far beyond the dignity of my position of somebody who’s past the half-century mark.
Yesterday I wrote more of The Widow and the Wizard story (and learned to my surprise who the witch really was — not at all what I’d been thinking all along), and right now I’m revising my play Safe and Sound (auditions are today and tomorrow).
Throw in your two cents