Interesting and original thought from novelist Elizabeth Goudge, on the art of writing:
Writing a book is much the same as any other kind of creative work, painting or carpentry or embroidery or having a baby, an act compounded of love, imagination and physical labour. And if a mother were to tell me that you do not need imagination to produce a baby I should answer that love and imagination cannot be separated. When a woman falls in love with a man it is as though she opened Pandora's box; all her longings and imaginings fly up.... And when the man's child is conceived it is the same...A book begins with falling in love. You lose your heart to a place, a house, an avenue of trees, or with a character who walks in and takes sudden and complete possession of you. Imagination glows, and there is the seed of your book.
Comments (7)
I love this quotation!
Posted by Beth Impson | August 15, 2009 5:21 PM
It sets off all sorts of trains of thought, I find.
Posted by Lydia | August 15, 2009 5:49 PM
It makes me want to get busy.
Posted by Beth Impson | August 15, 2009 5:50 PM
(What am I doing on this chick-thread?)
Posted by George R. | August 15, 2009 6:48 PM
Good piece, Lydia. Having just published my own book, I'm more inclined to agree with Winston Churchill: "Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”
Posted by Scott Klusendorf | August 15, 2009 6:52 PM
I like that, Scott. I have a friend who wrote a statistics textbook. He is unmarried and often referred to the book as his mistress and talked about how he was wedded to it and had no time for anything else. Now, being a talented pianist, he says he is married to his piano. (This is a guy who definitely needs to get a real wife.)
Posted by Lydia | August 15, 2009 7:12 PM
A beautiful and evocative passage. Thank you. That and the Churchill quote will help get me back onto a book project that has been neglected a while.
Posted by Hannon | August 16, 2009 2:17 PM