You might 'write from the heart,' but you'd better polish with your brain.
Interpretation
Emotional expression in writing must be refined with critical thinking.
Margaret Atwood's quote emphasizes the importance of balancing emotional authenticity and intellectual rigor in writing. While heartfelt creativity is essential for engaging storytelling, the process of editing and refining one's work with logic and reason is equally vital to ensure clarity, effectiveness, and impact.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a writing workshop to inspire participants to balance creativity with revision techniques.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
I've tried writing on a computer thinking it would make me more efficient, but if you're writing crummy stuff, being efficient is no help.
I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.
Above all, have a good time. If you aren’t enjoying writing it, you can hardly expect someone else to enjoy reading it.
It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that there are people out there reading your work, people who may be deeply affected by what you do, that you are writing not just for yourself, but for them.
I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.
When I finish a first draft, it's always just as much of a mess as it's always been. I still make the same mistakes every time.
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