I've been collecting quotations about writing ever since I seriously began freelancing in the 1970s. By the time I had about 6,000 I began thinking about how to share them with other writers. Rather than organize them by topic or author, I decided to group them under questions I, as a writer, often found myself asking:
How do I get started?
What do I do about writer's block?
Why do writers write, anyway?
How should I create and handle my characters?
What can you tell me about plots and settings?
Where do you get your ideas?
What can you tell me about writing a novel?
What makes for a good short story?
How do you handle criticism?
Writing is just telling a story--right?
Is rewriting as difficult as it sounds?
What do I need to know about research?
How do I go about writing plays?
Can I write poetry?
How do I go about writing comedy and satire?
What should I know about editors and publishers?
What can you tell me about writing in different genres?
Do you have a writing method?
What should I know abut personal writing--journals, diaries, and memoirs?
What do I need to know about writing for children and adolescents?
Then I imagined writers across the centuries sitting down to discuss these common questions. Imagine what we'd hear if writers could magically join us in dialogue at a "common table."
In my research I ran across a little collection of quotations by James Charlton called The Writer's Quotation Book: A Literary Companion. Charlton said writers collect quotations to create a "living place that conforms to their own sensibility and shape. Reason enough, I say.
Ursula K. Le Guin once said, "As you read [a book] word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence of music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul."
I like the idea of reading (and writing) affecting the size and temper of our souls. That's what I hope this collection might be: a calling together to participate note-by-note, word-by-word, in our mutual "coming-to-be."
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