Everyday Canvas

On Writing...Again

Prompt: Ann Patchett says, “I never learned how to take the beautiful thing in my imagination and put it on paper without feeling I killed it along the way. I did, however, learn how to weather the death, and I learned how to forgive myself for it.” Do you agree with her or is the process different for you?

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First, let me just say that I forgive myself for my entire portfolio and whatever else lurks outside of it that came out of my pen.

As to taking a beautiful thing from imagination, that has never happened to me because nothing in its entirety forms in my imagination, ever, before I write it. If it did, I would probably not write it, for lacking the surprise-for-myself factor.

My modus operandi is to take a flicker of an idea or a snippet of something or other and to develop it as I write it. As to messing up the whole thing, yeah, I can relate to that.

Anne Patchett must be a very lucky writer to be able to imagine an entire beautiful thing before setting the pen on paper or placing her fingers on the keyboard. It may well be that I don’t have such good vision to start with. I know about the killing at the end but not the beautiful whole in the beginning.

I think any writer should be, and usually is, able to write something on any given idea, prompt, or imagined concept. How good it may turn out can be up for discussion. I also think, if we writers are aiming at doing the best we can do, what we choose to write about is usually far more important than any decision we make as to how to write it. This doesn’t mean, however, that we should not try untrodden paths since we never know what we can encounter on the way.