Terri Windling's Blog, page 176
November 21, 2013
Still Writing
From "Beginning Again," in Dani Shapiro's luminous book, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of the Creative Live (which I highly recommend):
"We maybe halfway through a novel, an essay, a story, or a memoir or we may be near the finish line on a piece that has taken us years. But wherever we are in our work, we have never been exactly here, today. Today, we need to relearn what it is we do. We have to remind ourselves to be patient, gentle with our foibles, ruthless with our time, withstanding of our frustrations. We remember what it is we need. The solitude of an empty home, a walk through the woods, a bath, or a half hour with a good book -- the echo of well-formed sentences in our ears. Whatever it takes to begin again....
"Writing is hard. We resist, we procrastinate, we veer off course. But we have this tool, this ability to begin again. Every sentence is new. Every paragraph, every chapter, every book is a country we have never been to before. We're clearing the brush. We don't know what's on the other side of that tree. We are visitors in a foreign land. And so we take a step. Up the stairs after the morning coffee. Back to the desk after the doorbell has rung. Return to the manuscript.
"It never gets easier. It shouldn't get easier. Word after word, sentence after sentence, we build our writing lives. We hope not to repeat ourselves. We hope to evolve as interpreters and witnesses of the world around us. We feel our way through darkness, pause, consider, breathe in, breathe out, begin again. And again, and again."
That's what I am doing this morning. Beginning again. Strolling through the hills and then returning to my desk, papers and books spread around me, a mug of coffee in hand, Tilly at my side.
November 19, 2013
What we need is here
"Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his union with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox! This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots..."
"I feel both the joy of wilderness and the absolute pain in terms of what we are losing. And I think we're afraid of inhabiting, of staying in this landscape of grief, yet if we don't acknowledge the grief, if we don't acknowledge the losses, then I feel we won't be able to step forward with compassionate intelligence to make the changes necessary to maintain wildness on the planet."
"I believe there is unspeakable joy in being fully present and responding totally to the moment. For me, that's where joy dwells and feeling lies; in fact, I think that's the well of all strength and wisdow -- knowing that all we have, all we will ever have, is right now; that's the gift."
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
(Click on the photographs for larger versions.) I'm away today, and prepared this post in advance, for automated posting. I'll be back in the studio on Thursday, and will respond to comments then.
November 18, 2013
What we really want
"Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.'' - Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook)
Dogs too, Tilly says. Dogs too.
Doris Lessing, 1919-2013
"Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, 'Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?' Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas -- inspiration.
"If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.
"When writers talk to each other, what they discuss is always to do with this imaginative space, this other time. 'Have you found it? Are you holding it fast?'
"...We are a jaded lot, we in our threatened world. We are good for irony and even cynicism. Some words and ideas we hardly use, so worn out have they become. But we may want to restore some words that have lost their potency.
"We have a treasure-house of literature, going back to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. It is all there, this wealth of literature, to be discovered again and again by whoever is lucky enough to come upon it. A treasure. Suppose it did not exist. How impoverished, how empty we would be.
"We own a legacy of languages, poems, histories, and it is not one that will ever be exhausted. It is there, always.
"We have a bequest of stories, tales from the old storytellers, some of whose names we know, but some not. The storytellers go back and back, to a clearing in the forest where a great fire burns, and the old shamans dance and sing, for our heritage of stories began in fire, magic, the spirit world. And that is where it is held, today.
"Ask any modern storyteller and they will say there is always a moment when they are touched with fire, with what we like to call inspiration, and this goes back and back to the beginning of our race, to the great winds that shaped us and our world.
"The storyteller is deep inside every one of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is ravaged by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise. But the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us -for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.
"That poor girl trudging through the dust, dreaming of an education for her children, do we think that we are better than she is -- we, stuffed full of food, our cupboards full of clothes, stifling in our superfluities?
"I think it is that girl, and the women who were talking about books and an education when they had not eaten for three days, that may yet define us."
- Doris Lessing (Nobel Prize speech, 2007)
I have no words...just deep gratitude for her work, her life, her intelligence, and her fierce, bright, irascible, transformational spirit.
Tunes for a Monday Morning
My apologies for posting late this morning. Our Internet service has gone wonky again, as happens all too often out here in rural Devon. It's a sleepy kind of morning, grey and still, so I'm matching nature's mood with a selection of gentle lullabys from around the world. These lovely songs all come from the Howard Assembly Room's Lullaby Project, featuring lullabys old and new.
Above, a Gaelic lullabye and song by Karine Polwart, from Scotland.
Below, "The Apple of His Eye" by Seth Lakeman, from here on Dartmoor.
Above, a traditional Portuguese lullaby peformed by Claudia Aurore.
Below, "Last Night," a traditional Bulgarian lullaby performed by the Perunika Trio.
Above: A Sephardic lullaby performed by Clara Sanabras.
Below: An Arabic lullaby performed by Abdul Salam Kheir.
And last, to bring it all back home to the British Isles:
"The Wormwood Carol" performed by Jackie Oates, with Chris Sarjeant and Belinda O'Hooley.
November 14, 2013
On the north Devon coast
"What will it take to become a society that praises those who care? That honors kindness more than success? That teaches children to love the earth more than accumulate its products? I suspect we will need to listen to different elders -- not the ones who promised wealth but the ones who taught compassion." - Linda Hogan
"As a writer, I believe it is our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustice and to create a prayer of beauty." - Terry Tempest Williams
"There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even remember that it exists." - Derrick Jensen (via Jonathan Carroll)
The speech of water,
the speech of earth,
the speech of mud
Are heard by those who listen with the heart.
- Rumi
Back home again....
My apologies for taking so long to get back to this blog, everyone. Between jet-lag, exhaustion, and the small mountain of mail and work I returned home to, I haven't exactly hit the ground running; I've hit the ground at a snail's pace....
The Singapore Writers Festival was splendid, a thoroughly inspiring experience, and I'll post some pictures from it soon. In the meantime, here are a few favorite quotes from various panels and discussions:
"To be sceptical without being cynical is a virtue that only the best writers have."
- Ravi Velloor (foreign editor at The Straits Times, Singapore)
"I think all good works of literature give you hope rather than despair, no matter how dark."
- Ma Jian (whose books are banned in his Chinese homeland)
"In my films [Bluebeard and The Sleeping Beauty] evil is cold, cruel and cold, like the Snow Queen's palace, like the sliver of ice in little Kay's eye. Goodness and bravery are warm and passionate. Passion is life."
- French filmmaker and author Catherine Breillat
"Paper is the strongest material in the world; paper can handle what I can't."
- Nadeem Aslam (on the "Culture of Violence" panel)
"As a writer, my homeland is the desk where I work."
- Nadeem Aslam, on being asked whether he writes from a Pakistani or English identity (on the "Crossing Cultures, Crossing Wires" panel)
Interviewed for a film project at the Festival, I was asked where I consider home to be...and as an American writer now embedded in family life in rural England, the question gave me pause. In childhood, "home" was a transient thing...while today, as a practitioner of mythic arts, "home" is deeply rooted in the land beneath my feet. But the answer I gave came straight from the gut: "Home is where my loved ones are."
The journey was lovely. And it's good to be home.
October 31, 2013
A calendar for dog lovers...
I'm in Singapore at the moment, and popping online just briefly for a Canine Public Service Announcement:
Please consider purchasing the 2014 Springador Calendar, featuring many winsome photographs of Springadors (Springer Spaniel/Labrador crosses). The calendar includes our own dear Tilly -- but most important, all the proceeds benefit dog rescue in the U.K..
You have to order quickly though, as all orders need to be received by tomorrow (Saturday, November 2), before the folks who created the calendar send it off to the printers. There are two ways to place an order: either on the Pawpads website, or through Amazon UK.
Meanwhile, here on the other side of the world, the Singapore Writers Festival is about to get into full swing. I'm delighted to be part of a fairy tale discussion with the French film-maker Catherine Breillat...and sad to learn that I'll be missing readings and talks by poet Carol Ann Duffy, who arrives the day I leave. Darn! All in all, it looks like it's going to be a jam-packed and fascinating Festival. I'll have more to report when I'm back home again.
October 29, 2013
Flying off....
I'm flying off to south-east Asia today as a guest of the Singapore Writers Festival. The writing life is a funny old thing. The long hours, the insecurity of freelance work, the crazy ups and downs of the publishing industry all make for a profession that's a lot less glamorous than most people imagine...but then someone invites you half-way around the world to talk about fairy tales, and suddenly it feels a little glamorous after all.
I'll be back on this blog in two weeks (Monday, November 11). If you happen to be going to the Singapore Writers Festival yourself, please come and introduce yourself. I'll also be at a fairy tale symposium in Sussex at the end of November, if Singapore is a little too far afield.
'See you in mid-November!
"Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday,
placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that
the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the
very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour
and meaning of art." - Freya Stark
''One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.'' - Henry Miller
Image above: "Green Willow" by Warwick Goble (1862-1943)
On giving ourselves permission...
"To allow ourselves to spend afternoons watching dancers rehearse, or
sit on a stone wall and watch the sunset, or spend the whole weekend
rereading Chekhov stories -- to know that we are doing what we’re supposed
to be doing -- is the deepest form of permission in our creative lives.
The British author and psychologist Adam Phillips has noted, 'When we
are inspired, rather like when we are in love, we can feel both
unintelligible to ourselves and most truly ourselves.' This is the
feeling I think we all yearn for, a kind of hyperreal dream state. We
read Emily Dickinson. We watch the dancers. We research a little known
piece of history obsessively. We fall in love. We don’t know why, and
yet these moments form the source from which all our words will spring."
- Dani Shapiro (from her new book, Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life -- which I'm reading now with great pleasure, and recommend)
Terri Windling's Blog
- Terri Windling's profile
- 708 followers
