A non-WW writer friend (yes, I do have a few)... has asked if I know the origin of either of these description of writing:

1)
It was along the lines of 'When I make up a story, it's like coming into a darkened room from bright sunlight. At first the room seems empty, but as your eyes adjust, gradually you begin to make out the furniture, and the details, and you see that the room is full of things, which gradually take shape.'

2)
I thought it was from Ann Lamott, Bird by Bird, but I've just bought a replacement copy of that and can't see it anywhere. I'm pretty sure it was an American woman who said it. She likened the process of imagination in writing a story to having 'a kid in the cellar' who handed her up ideas from pretty much out of nowhere.



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Oops! Clicked 'post' too soon. If anyone's got any ideas, she/I would be grateful!

We think 1) isn't George Eliot

We thnk 2) isn't Dorothea Brande or Margaret Atwood or - as she says - Ann Lamott..

Any ideas?

No idea, sorry!

I googled and, apparently, you did.

Emma

Margaret Atwood
Negotiating with the Dead

I think one of these two excerpts might be pointers:

Another said it was like being in a completely dark room, feeling her way: she had to rearrange the furniture in the dark, and then when it was all arranged the light would come on.

or

Virginia Woolf said that writing a novel is like walking through a dark room, holding a lantern which lights up what is already in the room anyway.

The V Woolf quote must be findable somewhere.

Chris

Did I? Good grief! I've been blogging too long...

The Woolf, certainly, but my friend's version is slightly differently.

And I'm sure I didn't say the kid-in-the-cellar one, although I do feel I've seen it somewhere.

Emma, could it be this from Bird by Bird -

"Then I do the menial work of getting it down on paper, because I'm the designated typist, and I'm also the person whose job it is to hold the lantern while the kid does the digging. What is the kid digging for? The stuff. Details and clues and images, invention, fresh ideas, an intuitive understanding of people. I tell you, the holder of the lantern doesn't even know what the kid is digging for half the time -- but she knows gold when she sees it."

from page 56 of my paperback edition, chapter titled 'Plot'.

The kid in the cellar one sounds a bit sinister. Sort of Stephen King/Thomas Harris sinister.

I mean, who keeps a child in their cellar?!

I mean, who keeps a child in their cellar?!

Mother Hubbard? [Each Peach Pear Plum]

Thanks, everyone, Michelle especially. Maybe my friend's thinking of the Ann Lamott quote. I sometimes realise I've conflated two similar-thinking quotations in my head.

I'm seeing the cellar in an American sense: the 'under the house' bit which isn't underground at all - but where the garage and the rumpus room and the furnace are...

Friend says thank you very much to everyone... and yes, maybe she's conflated the Ann Lamott with something else.

We do need these images, don't we, for what's going on - it's so hard to describe to non-writers. Then there's the one about writing a novel being like driving a road at night, by the light of your headlights. You can only see 100yards ahead, but you can go the whole way with it.

By the way, Margaret Atwood's book about writing, Negotiating with the Dead, is fab. Not so much a how-to-write book, as a how-writing-is book. The slippery double...

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E L Doctorow is the road-driving one, BTW