When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!
Judy BlumeRead
I was always a storyteller. I just didn't know it. I never shared the stories I made up inside my head when I was growing up. I never wrote them down, either. But I can't remember a time when they weren't there.
Interpretation
Storytelling is an inherent part of creativity that often goes unrecognized until it is expressed.
Judy Blume reflects on the innate nature of storytelling that existed within her from a young age, even before she consciously recognized it. This quote illustrates the idea that creativity often simmers beneath the surface, waiting for the right moment or impetus to be shared with the world, emphasizing the importance of recognizing and articulating our inner narratives.
In practice
During a workshop on creativity, you might use this quote to inspire participants to explore their own stories.
When I lock myself up to write, I cannot allow myself to think about the censor or the reviewer or anyone but my characters and their story!
What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.
What can happen if a young reader picks up a book he/she isn't yet ready for? Questions, maybe. Usually, that child puts down the book and says, 'Boring.' Or, 'I'm not ready for this.' Kids are really good at knowing what they can handle.
Concentrate on how good if feels to be alive. No matter what. Just to see the color of the sky, just to smell the air, and feel the wind in your face
I wrote 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' right out of my own experiences and my own feelings when I was in sixth grade.
Nobody ever asks me why my characters don't text each other. Besides, as soon as you put something 'electronic' in a book, it's already out of date by the time it's published: everything will have changed. Human emotion, on the other hand, will never change.
It is not art in the professionalized sense about which I care, but that which is created sacredly, as a result of a deep inner experience, with all of oneself, and that becomes 'art' in time.
To provide background and physical description and all the rest is of course vital to fiction, but vital only insofar as such detail is in the service of a richly imagined story, rather than in the service of good botany or good philosophy or good geography.
All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit is sounded-the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap of the trees.
I nearly always write β just as I nearly always breathe.
Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us...It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wallpaper and that our sense of purpose may be derailed by an unfortunate bedspread
Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.