How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
And who knows? Maybe what you've written will help others, will be a small part of the solution. You don't even have to know how or in what way, but if you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. (29.31)
In one way, writers have it easy (not in lots of others, trust us). If you're a mechanical engineer or something, you actually have to know how your bridge is going to work. But if you're a writer, you can do something that eventually changes somebody's life without the slightest clue how it's going to work, at least at first. It's a bit like being Neville Longbottom: he's seriously a hero, even if he doesn't expect it of himself. Of course, it might take 10 years, but who's counting?
Quote #8
There are moments when I am writing when I think that if other people knew how I felt right now, they'd burn me at the stake for feeling so good, so full, so much intense pleasure. I pay through the nose for these moments, of course, with lots of torture and self-loathing and tedium, but when I am done for the day, I have something to show for it. When the ancient Egyptians finished building the pyramids, they had built the pyramids. Perhaps they are good role models: they thought they were working for God, so they worked with a sense of concentration and religious awe. (Also, my friend Carpenter tells me, they drank all day and took time off every few hours to oil each other. I believe that all my other writer friends do this, too, but they won't let me in on it.) (29.27)
It's nice to know that sometimes writing is more fun than a trip to Universal Studios. Plus, as Lamott says, at the end of the day, you've got something to show off. If you write a page a day for the next 10 years, you'll have 3,650 pages. That's longer than War and Peace plus Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We added it up.
Quote #9
Don't underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor. (29.30)
Writing really is like being a Jedi knight or a king or queen of Narnia or something. So maybe you don't start out with a lightsaber or a sword from Father Christmas, but you do get to join a group of people who know what it is to tell the truth about things, and who keep doing it over years and years. Besides, you get to invent things like lightsabers.