Posts Tagged‘Writing on Writing’
Quotation of the Week: Gish Jen, on Apple Computers & Writing
As for whether the Apple computers changed not only who wrote, but what they wrote, I can’t speak for others. I can only say that these computers coaxed out of me an expansiveness the typewriter never did. For every writer, the leap from short story to novel is, well, a leap. It involves faith, and resources, and a conception, finally, of how much room is yours in the world. I was not a person who would have looked at a ream of paper and thought, “Sure, that is mine to fill up.” But I turned out to be a person who could keep moving a cursor until I’d filled one ream, then another. It is a truly minuscule reason, in the scheme of things, for which to celebrate and mourn Steve Jobs. Still, I add my small reason to the infinity of others.
–Gish Jen
Source: Jen’s lovely op-ed in last Sunday’s New York Times, “My Muse Was an Apple Computer”
The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers
Quotation of the Week: Roger Ebert
“When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thoughts fall aside and it is all just there. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.”
–Roger Ebert
Source: “Roger Ebert on Writing: !5 Reflections from Life Itself,” TheAtlantic.com. For more about Ebert’s new memoir, see Harvey Freedenberg’s review for Bookreporter.