Run fast, stand still.
--Ray Bradbury
--from Zen in the Art of Writing
--Ray Bradbury
--from Zen in the Art of Writing
Bradbury's idea, elaborated in the next paragraph, is that "The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style...."
The other thing about speed is that it encourages you to get down that thing that you feel most strongly about. This is certainly what was going on almost two years ago, when I was drafting StT like a madwoman. And as Bradbury also says, that thing you feel most strongly about is the one that's going to call forth the writing that you and only you can do.
Standing still, Bradbury most emphatically does not say, but I think, is for revisions. (Unlike many of us, Bradbury does not seem to spend a lot of time talking about revisions.) Revisions are when you can go back and intensify what you've written, making it more itself, get even close to that thing you feel most strongly about.
Both techniques are crucial to a writer's survival, as much as they are to animals'.
May your week be filled with speed and with stillness.
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