I believe you have to write every dayโmake the time. Itโs about having an organized mind instead of a chaotic and untidy one. There is a myth that writers are bohemian and do what they like in their own way. Real writers are the most organized people on the planet. You have to be. Youโre doing the work and running your own business as well. Itโs an incredibly organized state. [Also reading]โฆone of the things reading does do is discipline your mind. There are no writers who are not readers.
Jeanette WintersonGreat control and great discipline are necessary when you reach your own editing stage of the book, but in the early stages you have to be prepared to let anything happen and to get it wrong or go off track. The development of a character is not smooth or simple - it is as tricky as meeting someone new whom you would like to know better.
Jeanette WintersonThe baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story โ of course that is how we all live, itโs the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. Itโs like reading a book with the first few pages missing. Itโs like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you โ and it canโt, and it shouldnโt, because something is missing.
Jeanette WintersonThe trouble is that when most people are apathetic ordinary people ... have to go too far, have to ruin their lives and be made an object of scorn just to get the point across. Did they really think I'd rather be camping by a polluted river than sitting in my own flat with my things about me?
Jeanette Winterson