You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.
Interpretation
Writing is driven by a personal need rather than external expectations.
In this quote, Joanne Harris emphasizes the intrinsic motivation behind writing. It suggests that true writers are not compelled by assignments or external pressures; instead, they write from a deep inner necessity. This act of writing serves various purposes, such as healing emotional wounds, expressing thoughts, or reviving dormant ideas, highlighting the profound relationship between the writer and their craft.
In practice
In a writing workshop, when discussing the creative process.
One of the things that writing has taught me is that fiction has a life of its own. Fictional places are sometimes more real than the view from our bedroom window. Fictional people can sometimes become as close to us as our loved ones.
If you can still write in spite of the fact that you're not getting paid, that nobody cares about what you're writing, that nobody wants to publish it, that everybody is telling you to do something else, and you still want to and you still enjoy it and you can't stop doing it...then you're a writer.
If you can actually get someone to sit on the edge of their seat and feel nervous if there's a knock at the door, then you've done something pretty terrific as a writer.
It isn't just a village. The houses aren't just places to live. Everything belongs to everybody. Everyone belongs to everyone else. Even a single person can make a difference.
Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.
This is a writer’s lesson: To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.
When the punk thing came along and I heard my friends saying, I hate these people with the pins in their ears. I said, Thank God, something got their attention.
The great poet is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the mind.
The two most important tools an architect has are the eraser in the drawing room and the sledge hammer on the construction site.
Rock & roll is so great, people should start dying for it. You don't understand. The music gave you back your beat so you could dream...The people just have to die for the music. People are dying for everything else, so why not for music? Die for it. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't you die for something pretty?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.