Blog 1

While reading The Practice of Creative Writing, I have found the quotes randomly stuck on the pages to be rather inspiring. I especially enjoyed the quotes in the Leaps section of the Energy chapter. Agnes De Mille was quoted saying "The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." I found this quote to give me confidence in my writing. She has a point, we don't exactly know what we're doing all the time. But this quote reassures me that someone else has had the same thoughts as I have and I'm more likely to take chances in my writing knowing that other people feel the same way. I also loved Cynthia Heimel's quote which reads, "When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap." After reading this quote, I had all of my confidence back. Not only are we not alone in the creative writing process, but we're all goofy hesitant fools trying to put our thoughts on paper. The best any of us can do is put our ideas out there for others to read and cross our fingers that they are well received. After all, according to half the class in our discussion about Shumway, there's no such thing as bad art! I think that as long as we really put in all the effort we can muster, write with as much as energy as we feel, and transfer the images in our head to the paper, we can be successful creative writers!