Цитаты из аудиокниги «Как писать книги», страница 23

Обычно говоришь себе, что тебе повезло, невероятно повезло, и это помогает, потому что это правда. Иногда это не помогает, вот и все. Тогда плачешь.Бедро болело, спина болела, нога тоже, но эта боль как-то отодвинулась дальше. Я начал подниматься над ней. Не было ощущения восторга, ничего в голове не звенело – в этот день, – но было ощущение выполненной работы, которое почти что не хуже. Я снова шел вперед, и этого достаточно. Самый страшный момент – это как раз перед началом.

После этого может быть только лучше.

Для таланта сама идея репетиции ничего не значит; если вы найдете что-то, в чем вы талантливы, вы будете это (чем бы это ни было) делать, пока не пойдет кровь из пальцев или глаза из орбит не начнут выпрыгивать.

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think this is fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist (what I get out of mine is mostly surly grunts, unless he’s on duty), but he’s got the inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life.

There are no bad dogs, according to the title of a popular training manual, but don’t tell that to the parent of a child mauled by a pit bull or a rottweiler; he or she is apt to bust your beak for you.

Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.

I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a lie. I told them that because if you agree to an interview you have to say something, and it plays better if it’s something at least half-clever. Also, I didn’t want to sound like a workaholic dweeb (just a workaholic, I guess). The truth is that when I’m writing, I write every day, workaholic dweeb or not. That includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday (at my age you try to ignore your goddam birthday anyway). And when I’m not working, I’m not working at all, although during those periods of full stop I usually feel at loose ends with myself and have trouble sleeping. For me, not working is the real work. When I’m writing, it’s all the playground, and the worst three hours I ever spent there were still pretty damned good.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.

H. P. Lovecraft was a genius when it came to tales of the macabre, but a terrible dialogue writer. He seems to have known it, too, because in the millions of words of fiction he wrote, fewer than five thou-sand are dialogue. The following passage from “The Colour Out of Space,” in which a dying farmer describes the alien presence which has invaded his well, showcases Lovecraft’s dialogue problems. Folks, people just don’t talk like this, even on their deathbeds:

“Nothin’ ...nothin’...the colour...it burns ...cold an’ wet...but it burns... it lived in the well...I seen it...a kind o’ smoke...jest like the flowers last spring...the well shone at night...everything alive...sucked the life out of everything...in the stone...it must a’come in that stone...pizened the whole place...dun’t know what it wants...that round thing the men from the college dug out’n the stone... it was that same colour...jest the same, like the flowers an’ plants...seeds...I seen it the fust time this week...it beats down your mind an’ then gets ye...burns ye up...It come from some place whar things ain’t as they is here...one o’ them professors said so...”

Когда пишешь вещь, ты рассказываешь ее сам себе.

Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.