April 2014 – Kathryn Amonett

Sections in the Bookstore

I spend what may seen like an inordinate amount of time in bookshops. I am, even as I type this, sitting in Waterstones, stewing over a novel by Italo Calvino. I’m a bit pressed for time so this won’t be a full review. Instead, I’ll post the practically perfectest quote I’ve ever come across.

“Sections in the bookstore

– Books You Haven’t Read

– Books You Needn’t Read

– Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading

– Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written

– Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered

– Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First

– Books Too Expensive Now and You’ll Wait ‘Til They’re Remaindered

– Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback

– Books You Can Borrow from Somebody

– Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too

– Books You’ve Been Planning to Read for Ages

– Books You’ve Been Hunting for Years Without Success

– Books Dealing with Something You’re Working on at the Moment

– Books You Want to Own So They’ll Be Handy Just in Case

– Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer

– Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves

– Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified

– Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time to Re-read

– Books You’ve Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It’s Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”

~Italo Calvino, If On a Winter’s Night A Traveler (A Book That Filled me with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified, but Upon Reading, is Now Entirely Justified..)

A Few Thoughts on Inspiration

“This is the tale I pray the divine Muse to unfold to us. Begin it, goddess, at whatever point you will.” ~ The Odyssey of Homer

These hussies…

… are muses (according to painter Baldassare Peruzzi).

But if you are like me (a writerly person) you probably have a love/hate relationship with these fickle ladies.

Best thing to do is just ignore them. Carry on writing as if you don’t need them, because you don’t, really. Choosing a time and place to write, every day, gets your brain into the habit of writing. I could go on at length about brain waves – alpha and gamma waves to be exact – but I won’t. (I wrote a fantastically unpopular essay describing what happens to the brain when being creative. Apparently a paper on neurology was not what the literary tutors wanted when they asked for an essay on “The Creative Process”. Ah well.)

The point is to write every day whether you are inspired or not. Think of creativity as a muscle, and if it isn’t regularly challenged, exercised, it grows weak and impotent.

Inspiration may seem sudden and electric, but lightning doesn’t strike those lying in sunny fields, but those constantly cranking the generator.

(And I realise I’ve just jumped between metaphors. They are a weakness of mine.)

This is miMewz. (See what I did there?)

He sits on my desk and sends me encouraging vibes of creativity (and rage). While I enjoy his company, I don’t depend on him for creative afflatus. That comes from sweaty cranking at that generator.

I say all this but I’m hugely hypocritical. In fact, since starting my MA in Creative Writing, I think I write fewer words per day than before. However, take this blog post as a resolution. Write every day, even if it’s shit.