Quote of the Week
I suppose I do get “blocked” sometimes but I don’t like to call it that. That seems to give it more power than I want it to have. What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks “the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,” you know. And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”—Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, photo by Dwight Carter, from her website.
- You want to talk about inspiring, take a look at Maya Angelou’s bio on her website. There’s a lot you might not know about this Renaissance woman.
- Her new book, Mom & Me & Mom, the story of her relationship with her mother, will be released by Random House on April 2, 2013. Details here.
- This quote comes from the 1993 book Writers Dreaming: 25 Writers Talk About Their Dreams and the Creative Process by Naomi Epel. It’s one of my all-time favorite books about writing; used copies may still be available online.
See more quotes about writing here.
Comments
4 Comments
BarbaraAnnYoder.com
Sign up to receive my posts!
We respect your email privacy.
Site content © 2022 Barbara Ann Yoder.
Love(!) Maya Angelou’s quote about not wanting to give that sense of being blocked any power and just sitting down to write anyway. I sabotage my muse, my purpose, my dreams by not beginning when I feel blocked. Time to practice something different. Thanks for this post.
Isn’t Maya Angelou wonderful? I love this quote too. Sometimes my best work comes when I don’t feel like writing or have been avoiding it. The writing leads me back to myself, and the words and ideas come in spite of my resistance. That’s the power of the writing process, and it’s good to note that there’s more power in writing than in not writing!
The key to overcoming writer’s block is to lower your standards. The block comes from putting pressure on yourself to do great things when, at any particular moment, great things are not forthcoming. Angelou is right. You just keep at it and–maybe–the muse visits and suddenly you’re working again at the top of your game.
Thanks for your comment, Ernie! So true!