Writing Inspiration: My ideas are a shapeless mass that my writing molds into beauty

Sell your book by asking people about... Five Great Quotations about Word Choice

Writing Inspiration: My ideas are a shapeless mass that my writing molds into beauty

The ancient Greeks believed the objects we created represented an idealized form of that thing. A sculptor chipped away at a block of marble to find the perfect representation of a body; the painter filling the blank canvas sought to create the perfect representation of a landscape.

When writing, you are like a potter who takes a shapeless mass of clay and seeks to mold it into a beautiful vase. The potter visualizes the size, form, shape and decorations upon the vase. In the same way, a writer envisions the length, genre, plot and style of his story.

Rather than clay, words are the writer’s natural material. And just as clay from one quarry might be different in its texture and color from clay found at another site, so each word you use is different in its meaning and sound.

True craftsmanship for the potter comes in being aware of what can be done with the clay and then having the knowledge and skills to shape it upon a wheel and properly fire it in a kiln. A writer also must be aware of what can be done with the words before him, of how to string them into sentences that best evoke the feeling and captures the message of the story.

Where the potter must pinch the spinning clay or coil it into a structure, the writer must compress passages to get the most out of his characters and descriptions or wind the plot so it takes the reader on an intriguing journey worth reading.

And just as a potter might find his fingers have left an imperfection and so remolds the wet clay upon the wheel or just as a sculptor might chip away a bit too much in one area and so revisits that portion of the statue to cover the flaw, so a writer must revise and rewrite paragraphs, passages, and scenes to ensure the story best reflects an idealized form of the tale that is being told.

If like the potter and the sculptor you keep at it, eventually you will rub out all of the blemishes in your story – and create a thing of beauty that brings joy and meaning to others, just as certainly as any vase or statue does.

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