“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
~from T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party
You may also like this Eliot quote in 10 Quotes About Persevering and Finding Your Story.
I’ve never been intimidated by a blank page or a brand new diary. When I was younger and in elementary school, I relished in-class writing assignments. Inspiration and ideas came easily to me, and I wrote fast and furious. Perhaps this is because I was a quiet student, who probably went days without speaking in class, so writing assignments gave me a chance to let loose all the thoughts that had been bottled up inside my head.
Most of the time when I sit down to write, I have little idea what will come out. I almost never work off of an outline, and even when I have a thesis or a direction I want to take my work, the writing seems to have a mind of its own. I feel that my job as a writer is to just let the words flow and the story will find itself. If I try to wrestle my words down to keep to some preconceived notion of what I am expected to say, I run the risk of missing something purer and truer.
Much more intimidating to me than the blank page is a work in progress. Are my words rebelling against my story and leading me astray? Has everything I’ve said been gibberish?
Below are famous literary quotes about persevering and finding form and structure:
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. ~William Faulkner
There is no method except to be very intelligent. ~T. S. Eliot
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane
Something that you feel will find its own form. ~Jack Kerouac
The task of a writer consists in being able to make something out of an idea. ~Thomas Mann
If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy’s trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one…he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent. ~Honore de Balzac
Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer. ~Ray Bradbury
It is perfectly okay to write garbage–as long as you edit brilliantly. ~C. J. Cherryh
Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it… ~Michael Crichton
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good. ~William Faulkner
Do you plot out your entire work before you begin writing?
With Hemingway and Gellhorn currently on HBO and a remake of The Great Gatsby heading to theatres this Christmas, The Observer’s Daniel D’Addario ponders if we’re experiencing a “Lost Generation Boom.”
The Lost Generation refers to the writers during the World War I era, many of whom became expatriates. The Lost Generation writers include F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos, among others. Hemingway popularized the term in A Moveable Feast, in which he quoted Stein as telling him a story about a man who said, “That’s what you all are … all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.”
D’Addario also references last summer’s Midnight in Paris, but in some regard, we’ve been experiencing the “boom” for quite some time now … at least in the cocktail scene. A few years ago, speakeasy-type bars became all the rage here in New York. Dimly lit lounges served up spiked punches in tea cups. There are also Jazz Age parties on Governor’s Island, where everyone gets all dolled up in fantastic flapper dresses and Sacque suits. And the Oak Room—which in the ‘20s was Algonquin’s Pergola Room—just reopened.
However, Hollywood isn’t only obsessed with the Lost Generation. The Beat Generation, which wasn’t popular for a long time, is beginning to see a revival. On the Road, based on Beat writer Jack Kerouac’s novel, just premiered at Cannes Film Festival in May and will be released Stateside sometime later this year. Next year, Kill Your Darlings, about a murder involving Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and others associated with the Beat Generation, will be released. In 2010, Howl, based on Allen Ginsberg’s poem and the trial that followed its publication, came out. These aren’t small movies by any means. Howl starred it-boy James Franco, Kill Your Darlings will star Daniel Radcliffe, and much has been made of On the Road starring Kristen Stewart.
Perhaps we’re trying to figure out our own generation by looking at those in the past.
Stephanie Nikolopoulos is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and speaker based in New York City.
She is the coauthor, with Paul Maher Jr., of "Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road.'"
You can email her at stephanie_701 {@} yahoo.com
Stephanie Nikolopoulos 