I know more about Emily Bronte than anyone I know. I know enough about her family to have been a part. I’ve walked with her on her damp luscious lonely moors, watched her strain to write on miniscule scraps of paper, seen her hide her works from prying eyes.
I’ve brooded alongside her and participated in her taciturnity. Before her death at the ripe old age of 30, I nursed her from the things that ultimately killed her: tuberculosis with a side order of Victorian thinking.
Tags: writing rats emily-bronte tuberculosis moors victorian-age
Only seconds slip by without me scrambling for the aid of someone better, more knowledgeable, to walk beside. Writers are good for that. They like nothing more than to tell you what they know.
Dorothy Sayers, with all her essays and treatises, was good for that. Are women human? What constitutes the mind of the Maker? How did Dante survive the Inferno? Ask Dorothy; she’ll tell you and gladly.
Tags: writing inferno dante rats dorothy-sayers are-women-human mind-of-the-maker
I think that’s why I write—the not knowing and the blasted good feeling I get out of it all.
Chila WoychikTags: writing writing-life rats
Nonfiction. I didn’t choose it as much as it chose me. It squatted and birthed me one raw winter day then jerked me up and set me to scribing.
Chila WoychikTags: writing nonfiction writing-life rats writing-process
I feign knowledge of writing: that I know something about it, that I should have learned something after all these years, that I might know something tomorrow.
I read too much and write too little, or write too much and live too little. I have no classical education, no literary degree. I’m not specialized, Hugoed or geniusized; should I be writing at all?
In this whole vast world, I’m a female peon sitting here at night wondering what it is I want to say. I aim for fluidity. But no, nix that line, that thought, this life. That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? This life: it’s out of reach. I’m not sure what I’m saying anymore.
Tags: writing writing-life rats writing-process stream-of-consciousness
I speak, I speak, and truth at that. Writers are a curious breed: brooding, fickle, alternately loving and hating their work—and each other. You’re my friend? Don’t pick up that pen!
Chila WoychikTags: friendship friends writing writing-life rats
Writing analogies are as abundant as ants at a picnic. We love nothing better than a good analogy, a “life-is-like-this” on the page. I breathe and out pops another analogy. As of this moment, I am sole owner of 1,643 analogies.
Chila WoychikTags: writing metaphors analogies rats stream-of-consciousness writing-process-creative-process
Pulitzer is a word but accomplishment is an aura.
Chila WoychikTags: writing rats pulitzer-prize pulitzer
I’ve had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.
Chila WoychikTags: writing creativity writing-life rats writing-process on-being-a-rat
PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATH
Conventions bleed my soul
squeeze me old
wear me grey
like a headstone in transit.
It’s tradition and form—
fear of the unknown—
driving me dead
in tight spaces darkly.
I cry aloud
but who can hear
when I stand alone
in the middle of an art show….
Tags: poetry writing sylvia-plath rats writing-process on-being-a-rat
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