Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.
Interpretation
Writing is simply a task that requires effort, regardless of the method used.
Sinclair Lewis emphasizes that writing, like any other form of labor, requires dedication and effort. The essence of writing lies not in the tools or techniques used, but in the commitment and hard work behind the process.
In practice
In a workshop about overcoming writer's block, this quote can inspire attendees to stay committed to their craft.
Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good-- kept him in touch with Higher Things.
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.
Writers kid themselves-about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type with your toes-it is just work.
She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them.
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.
There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of James Joyce, who, however insane they may be, have refused to be genteel and traditional and dull.
I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds.
Writing isn't something I do, writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.
Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you β as if you haven't been told a million times already β that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.
Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
As human beings, we aren't as individual as we'd like to believe we are. And I think that's what makes acting possible. Despite the fact that I have not experienced something, I have it in my human capacity to imagine it and to put myself in someone else's shoes, and to take someone else's circumstances personally.
Football is the ballet of the masses.
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