The Aim of Every Artist is to Arrest Motion

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass. (William Faulkner)

Motion and Action

Never mistake motion for action. (Ernest Hemingway)

How to Tell a Story

Now, literal-minded men might think it's a mistake to exaggerate while telling a story. They think, Oh, I'll lose my credibility. This is incorrect. A good storyteller knows that exaggeration is key, that it's worthless unless it's extreme, and that it doesn't work unless you, as the storyteller, begin to actually and truthfully (99.9 percent) believe in it.

from "How to Tell a Story" by Jeanne Maria Laskas, Esquire November 2000

The Aim of Every Artist is to Arrest Motion

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass. (William Faulkner)

Don't Read So Much

One of the things I tell my students at Houston is, "Stop! Don't read so much." Usually teachers are saying just the opposite, but there comes a time when you have to shut down all of the input channels, and you have to go into yourself and. write what's in there. Sometimes students in writing programs are using too much of their logical and critical brainpower and not enough of their intuition.

from "An Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni" by Sarah Anne Johnson The Writer's Chronicle September 2002

Talking with Writers

Talk is a way writers can help each other find new directions. "Hey, that's great; have you written about it?" "That's a good line, 'I lived here six years and can't remember a thing, not a thing.' Write it down and begin a poem with it." Once I came home from a visit in Boston and said to a friend in passing, "Oh, he's crazy about her." She was in the process of writing a mystery novel in those days and honed in, "How can you tell he was crazy about her? Tell me what actions he did." I laughed. You can't make general statements around writers-they want me not to "tell" but to "show" with incidents.


Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg

The Knowledge of a Whole Larger Story

What I learned from reading so many novels, is that the novel, as it goes on, has to expand. It has to give you a sense of a larger life, not just the story you're dealing with, no matter how well it's told. There must be a sense of resonance, a sense that in that story is the knowledge of a whole larger story whose presence is felt.

from "An Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni" by Sarah Anne Johnson The Writer's Chronicle September 2002