Thursday, April 12, 2012

Might as well write Moby Dick

"It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick." (Annie Dillard, The Writing Life)

Unless of course you dream a lifetime of being a chef, and want to open your own bistro and create a cookbook to share your culinary brilliance with the world, then by all means, don't write Moby-Dick -  let me do it!

Inspired by the success of my friends'  recent publications (I have no shame, I will boldly name drop wherever I go, in alphabetical order so as not to show favouritism!!):

Julie Kirkpatrick, The Camino Letters,
Angela Kublik, Home and Away; Writing the Land,
Edeana Malcolm, A Garden in the Wilderness,
Robin Stevenson, Hummingbird Heart,
Arthur John Stewart, Odd Ball,

I turn my mind back again to thoughts of writing.

I thumbed through my well-worn copy of The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, and scribbled out bits and pieces thinking of inspiration:  "You might as well write Moby-Dick" - I can shorten that even further, "You might as well write."

You want to be a writer, so write something.

The character played by Billy Crystal in Throw Momma From the Train had this advice for the writers in his writing class:  "Writers write."  You can't get much more distilled than that.

Write?

1 comment:

THE CAMINO LETTERS said...

Just found this. Go, beautiful you. Write, write, write...