Writing Creativity and Soul Quotes

“In writing, as in life, perfectionism is not so much the quest for excellence as a response to fear. Fear of limitations. Fear of failure. Fear of not being good enough.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul

“In the practice of mindfulness, there’s a saying: “When you’re walking, walk; when you’re eating, eat,”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul

“In order to turn my abstract idea into a concrete form, the first thing I have to do is dive into a sea of chaos. I never feel ready for it. I will waste a few days procrastinating with lame activities like relabeling file folders, but in the end I come around to the inevitable. I open several folders where I’ve collected Post-it notes and errant scraps of paper containing thoughts I’ve scribbled about the idea I’m contemplating. They might contain possible characters, bits and pieces of a plot, probable settings, musings on potential themes, images, sketches, postcards, descriptions, and a bunch of random ideas that could turn out to be inspired or rubbish. I read through the whole muddle, then amplify the content, jotting down whatever brainstorms and insights come to me. This interlude, which I think of as uncensored gathering, can go on for several hours or days or weeks. Whether it yields a fat pile of notes or a thin one doesn’t matter so much. What matters is that the pile emerges from inside me and represents the browsing and incubation of my imagination. Now the job is to sort all this. Visualize Psyche in the Greek myth sorting her gigantic mound of seeds. I spread out all the raw material I’ve collected across my desk and tabletops, and when I run out of furniture, I resort to the floor. I brood over the clutter and confusion. Using scissors and tape, I cut, paste, arrange, and rearrange the material into kindred piles. I make collages and scribble things on whiteboards. I discard and distill. At some point the whole thing becomes so maddening, so overwhelming, so nuts, I can hardly remain in the room. This is the moment I tell myself that everything is proceeding as it should. Chaos is good, I say. I remind myself that according to Nietzsche, “One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” I’m all about the dancing star. So I sit there and hold the tensions inside myself and tend the madness. I do this because my persistence at this critical, unruly, fragile phase of writing is the first step in imposing order. Creativity begins in chaos. That’s just the way it is. The challenge is to bring form and order to it. As writing teacher Leon Surmelian wrote, “In literature madness uncontrolled is madness, madness controlled is genius.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul

“The Aletis heroine leaves home and some untenable situation and travels physically, finding a necessary apartness, but at the same time she travels mentally, spiritually, and/or emotionally, making her way to a new inner landscape. Her exodus will usher her into a new understanding and unfolding of who she is. The road out becomes the road in.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul

“When we read fiction and memoir, we participate in the lives of others, in their sufferings, ecstasies, yearnings, and struggles, in all the ways their lives are shattered and put back together. We are able to see the world through their eyes and feel with their hearts.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul

“Dialogue is talking with a purpose. More than just idle words, it needs to have an intention.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul

“Writing is both an art and a craft, a blend of mystery and method. I believe that when we’re able to balance these polarities, we come closest to our best work.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul

“We each have inside us the makings of our own largeness.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul

“This particular convergence of time, place, and culture created the overarching narrative into which I was born, a narrative I’ve been rewriting ever since. “Geography is fate,” wrote Heraclitus. That was true of me.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, Writing Creativity and Soul