“I believe that eventually quantity will make up for quality. How so? Michelangelo’s, da Vinci’s, Tintoretto’s billion sketches, the quantitative, prepared them for the qualitative, single sketches further down the line, single portraits, single landscapes of incredible control and beauty. Quantity gives experience. From experience alone can come quality.”
(Ray Bradbury)
I agree with this. When I first had the inkling to write, I was as far from an artistic bent as you can get. I worked as a Defense Analyst for the U.S. Government Accountability Office. During that time, the real joy of my life came in the hour or so in the morning before I left for work when I would write my Morning Pages, a la Julia Cameron. Morning Pages are three pages of your brain spilled onto paper. I loved this, and I loved that I could do something for myself for three pages a day.
No one will ever read it. (I don’t even want to read it.) But it was a great exercise in learning how to sit down and produce something from my heart (or brain mush) each day, whether “good writing” or “bad writing”—mostly “bad”(if you’re the type that likes to qualify things.) If it weren’t for that daily exercise in producing mush, I wouldn’t have gotten over my grade school fear of just putting something down on the page.
My 18 month old is a writer. She loves to grab a crayon and scribble on a piece of construction paper…or the wall. My 3 year old is a writer too. He loves to grab the crayon from his sister’s hand, watch her scream bloody murder and write on paper napkins or notebooks or wherever.
I love watching them scribble. The scribbles are the thing.
What about you? Do you agree with this quote from Ray Bradbury?
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