One of my favourite books about writing is by Abigail Thomas Thinking about Memoir. And now another treasure has fallen into my possession: Write by the Berlin based author Sarah Quigley. In her introduction Quigley says you can use the book as "a bag of surprises" and it's written with this generous attitude. I read it fast, over the weekend, and now it's by my side on the desk. Already its presence is inspiring and I'm seriously considering of starting a fiction writing group (anyone?)
Take for instance Sarah Quigley's advice on writing material. In any kind of writing, also art criticism, one is often looking for the spectacular to write about so to make it more interesting. Instead, the material of writing is rather present in the everyday. "How mundane moments," Sarah Quigley observes, "can somehow transcend themselves, just because you're looking straight at them."
As we are mostly indoors now during this pandemic, imagine this scene:
"That it is possible to sit in a small enclosed space for months at a time and still, somehow, be hunting down ideas and gathering up material. Your desk, your cracked walls and ceiling, your old books, your jar of pencils, and your own body: these can be enough. Add a sharp eye to observe them, a memory to inject life into them, and an imagination to transform them, and then you have something to write about."