When I put the first scratches down on paper, it’s hard to believe that it will ever turn into something worth reading. It takes a leap of faith to keep on scratching.
“Fiction, like sculpture or painting, begins with a rough sketch. One gets down the characters and their behavior any way one can, knowing the sentences will have to be revised, knowing the characters’ actions may change. It makes no difference how clumsy the sketch is—sketches are not supposed to be polished and elegant. All that matters is that, going over and over the sketch as if one had all eternity for finishing one’s story, one improves now this sentence, now that, noticing what changes the new sentences urge, and in the process one gets the characters and their behavior clearer in one’s head, gradually discovering deeper and deeper implications of the characters’ problems and hopes. Fiction does not spring into the world full grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original and profound. — John Gardner
MAD about Words
is the brainchild (and heartchild) of
Mary Ann de Stefano
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Nebulous thoughts and forms manifest themselves in the mind and then we metamorphosize them onto paper, first, something is there, but not quite, kaleidoscopic materializing in to a solid form… finally at last… the book, or poem, or play. Hurrah! Hurrah !