Quotes from Louise DeSalvo

Trying to work too quickly, trying to work in too polished a way too quickly, expecting clarity too soon, can set us up for failure.

Getting completely lost, coming unstrung and unbound, arriving at unknown and unexpected places, is, for me, a critical part of writing.

Slow writing is a meditative act: slowing down to understand our relationship to our writing, slowing down to determine our authentic subjects, slowing down to write complex works, slowing down to study our literary antecedents.

The most productive writers and creative people I know realize that dreaming and daydreaming are important parts of how writers work. We might not know, now, what to do with the images our dreams or daydreams provide, but one day, if we continue to try to unravel their meaning, as Naylor's process illustrates, we will.

As we begin a work, remembering we needn't know how it'll turn out or whether it'll be successful might be comforting. And we can cultivate our ability to work despite confusion

Let's imagine how we might grow as writers if we work in a slow writing way rather than rushing through our work trying to accumulate a pile of pages. Just imagine what we might gain from being writers who move slowly through our work and slowly through our lives.

The three books I wrote by hand and with a typewriter took less time than the ones I've written using a computer.

When we begin a new project, as embryonic or unsatisfactory as our early work may seem, we're readying ourselves for the deeper work that comes later. We learn about ourselves as writers. We establish our work's foundation. We permit ourselves to play and explore. We commit—or recommit—to working steadily and purposefully.

Publishers now act as if writing is the same as typing.

Literary history teaches us that enormously successful writers are often members of a cohort of creative people who, as they mature in their field, help one another achieve success. The work of each member of the group gains more notice than if each had worked in isolation.

We push aside work that takes long—novels, poetry collections, biographies, articles, memoirs—to write e-mail messages that take little time while complaining we have no time to write.

Woolf penned roughly 535 words and crossed out 73 of them, netting her 462 words for her day's work. Let's say she worked for three hours. That's about 178 words an hour including the words she deleted—and Woolf was writing at the height of her creative powers.

Lady Slane wants to rent [the house] and asks the owner Mr Bucktrout, whether he believes the house will suit her. He replies, 'Ah, but the question is, will you suit IT?

The effects of moving are experienced in the body, in the imagination, in the realm of desire. What the eye sees, what the body feels, what the heart yearns for, what remains and what has been lost -- these are difficult at first to describe.

It is only familiarity, [Bonnard] seems to say, that can elicit such a profound relationship to our living spaces, but only if we see these places as if for the first time.

There is something of a congruence here between my grandfather's terror propelling him across an ocean to America and mine and my husband's rushing us into a three-room apartment in Jersey City. In fact, each of my moves is remotely connected to feeling my life or well-being was threatened.

The trick is to keep at it steadily.We'll see progress in time.""Didion believes the notebook's value lies in its record of "How it felt to be me"at a particular time.""Henry Miller believed reading was 'an act of creation' By reading slowly,carefully,and with complete attention,he believed,we respect the writer's work and enrich our lives.

My work has changed my life. My work has saved my life. My life has changed my work.