Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.
Interpretation
Being a writer is defined by the act of writing, not by external circumstances or personal struggles.
A.L. Kennedy emphasizes that the essence of being a writer lies in the commitment to writing itself, regardless of the challenges or eccentricities one may face. This quote suggests that true writers must continuously engage with their craft rather than let life's difficulties define their identity or abilities as writers.
In practice
During a motivational speech for aspiring authors.
You can look at the words on this paper and, because they are the ones I am used to choosing, they will show you the shape of me. I am here to be read in the way you might read the impression of my weight in a bed after a still night, a restless night, a night not alone.
Remember you love writing. It wouldn’t be worth it if you didn’t. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back.
Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won't need to take notes.
The public needs art, and it is the responsibility of a ’self-proclaimed artist’ to realize the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for the few and ignore the masses. … I am interested in making art to be experienced and explored by as many individuals as possible with as many different individual ideas about the given piece with no final meaning attached. The viewer creates the reality, the meaning, the conception of the piece. I am merely a middleman trying to bring ideas together.
I do - very specifically, I remember Bessie Smith; I used to collect 78 records that I would buy from the St Vincent de Paul store at five cents apiece, and I did this indiscriminately. I would just take whatever was there. And I listened to Patti Page and Walter Huston, 'September Song.'
Today, although as a whole, the industry is still male-dominated, more women are drawing comics than ever before, and there are more venues for them to see their work in print. In the 1950s, when the comic industry hit an all-time low, there was no place for women to go. Today, because of graphic novels, there's no place for aspiring women cartoonists to go but forward.
That's another pompous expression that is out of fashion, to say that poetry is a gift. It sounds pompous because you say, 'Who gave you the gift, and what is this gift?' And the gift is where I am; the gift is what I have come out of, the people around me who, I think, are beautiful people.
Films and hotels have many aspects that are the same. For example, there is always a big vision, an idea.
The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven't.
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