Writers are God's Fools

My most recent brush with poverty has forced me to get out of the house and drag myself to the local library. In retrospect, I should have done this a lot sooner, but I didn't...that's just how things happen. So anyhoo- I found this book in the nonfiction section titled "Good Advice on Writing: Great Quotations from Writers Past and Present on How to Write Well." Now, I can readily admit, I'm a sucker for a good quote, but I am also very aware of the danger of over-quoting. If all you do is quote, you never actually say anything, but I came across one that I love and cannot get out of my brain so I am forced to share it instead.

"To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.

I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.

May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories-science fiction or otherwise.
Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."
                                                               -Ray Bradbury

Which got me thinking, in his own right...

-A writer is a god -he creates a world to live in and people to inhabit it. He wishes the inhabitants to do as he wants, but the inhabitants, having free will, sometimes do as they please with no regard to plot, pacing, or character development. So, sometimes, the god must intervene.

-A writer is a devil-poking holes in the world that god created and causing trouble for all of the inhabitants.

- A writer is a destroyer-tearing down and erasing the blight of the world. Wiping out everything the writer (as a god) had worked so hard to create, but deemed unworthy.

-A writer is a builder-working from the bare bones of a story he adds the materials and words necessary to make a sturdy structure.

We wear many hats and perform many tasks that directly contradict each other, but I love it and can't get enough. Thank god I'm a fool.