This is cheating a bit (in blog terms) because I posted this quote over at Sterling Editing last week. But not everyone may visit there; and the SE blog is very much focused on helping or inspiring writers. It focuses out. Here in my little personal corner of the internet, it can just be about me if I like…
… and today I do.
Here’s what Robert McKee has to say about the love it takes to write well. It speaks to me because I think it speaks about me. I recognize myself.
The love of story — the belief that your vision can be expressed only through story, that characters can be more “real” than people, that the fictional world is more profound than the concrete. The love of the dramatic — a fascination with the sudden surprises and revelations that bring sea-changes in life. The love of truth — the belief that lies cripple the artist, that every truth in life must be questioned, down to one’s own secret motives. The love of humanity — a willingness to empathize with suffering souls, to crawl inside their skins and see the world through their eyes. The love of sensation — the desire to indulge not only the physical but the inner senses. The love of dreaming — the pleasure in taking leisurely rides on your imagination just to see where it leads. The love of humor — a joy in the saving grace that restores the balance of life. The love of language — the delight in sound and sense, syntax and semantics. The love of duality — a feel for life’s hidden contradictions, a healthy suspicion that things are not what they seem. The love of perfection — the passion to write and rewrite in pursuit of the perfect moment. The love of uniqueness — the thrill of audacity and a stone-faced calm when it is met by ridicule. The love of beauty — an innate sense that treasures good writing, hates bad writing, and knows the difference. The love of self — a strength that doesn’t need to be constantly reassured, that never doubts that you are indeed a writer. You must love to write and bear the loneliness.
But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.
— Robert McKee, from Story
Reading these sentences makes me feel like a little girl again, wide-eyed in a dark movie theatre on a hot Florida summer afternoon, clapping my hands until they hurt so that Tinkerbelle wouldn’t die: calling out I believe, I believe! And still I am calling. I believe in the heightened life of the imagination, and I believe in bringing as much of that same joy as I can to my everyday life; to this moment as I write about love and story with the taste of tea in my mouth and outside the wind blowing, autumn clouds racing across they sky so it turns blue to gray to blue again, and the rowan tree sags with red berries and little puffball birds, and it’s just beautiful, you know? It’s so beautiful.
It’s beautiful that way inside my head too, in that other life where the only one in the theatre is me, where all the stories are powerful, strong, strange, wild. They roll through me like autumn clouds. The wind blows.
I read it over there, and I thought then how like you it was then – almost as if you could have written it yourself.
And it’s even better to read your thoughts on it.
I love all of that.
Ah.
That’s a great quote (and true).
IMO passages like this need to be re-read now and again because they are comprised of many strata and you can only see so many of those strata at once. In the seven days between my reading the passage on SE and me reading it just now here, I’ve seen a new dimension to it because my own writing focus has sharpened. There are aspects of this I needed to see today. Thank you for posting it.
You’re welcome. I’m glad you found something fresh in it. One of the things I love about writing is that the better I get at it, the deeper it becomes for me. The more I do, the bigger it gets.