Why didn’t someone tell me Terry Brooks wrote a book on writing? Just starting to read it, but it looks promising (and way more fun than that Norman Mailer book on writing).
Here’s a little tidbit:
The writer Walter Mosley wrote a few years ago in an article that appeared in the New York Times that writing is gathering smoke— the smoke of dreams, of ideas, of the imagination. We collect that smoke and try to make something out of it. It doesn’t happen all at once, but only over time and never on a determinable schedule. We visit our hazy treasure every day in order not to lose sight of it, not to let it evaporate from neglect. At some point in our tending and examination, something substantial will come alive.
“Gathering smoke” is just what I feel like I’m doing today.