« You just can't win | Main | Some good deeds are punished »

Aretha Franklin's Creative Process

Kennedy, ''Short Stories: 10 Tips'' -- Jerz: EL150 (Intro to Literary Study)

"If you are having trouble getting started, look out the window. The whole world is a story, and every moment is a miracle."

I love this quote because it really disparages the concept of writer's block. It is true that you can just look out the window at animals or people on the street, observe their behavior, and come up with a back story to explain it. I love to just watch people and do this, come up with little character quirks they might have judging from the way they walk and dress and look around. Observation is a skill all writers really need to have, I think. They also have to be able to put themselves in other people's shoes. For instance, Aretha Franklin claimed to have written "Call Me" from watching a couple on the street, but the lyrics also seem to relate to her own troubled marriage she was experiencing at the time. You can get a lot of ideas from observation, but you also have to find a way to relate to your ideas on a personal level so you will really know what you're writing about.

Comments (2)

Kayla:

I checked your blog after you commented mine about the Aretha refrence. I also find it interesting. Your right- you never can go wrong following the Queen.

MacKenzie Harbison:

I also liked this quote. I knew it was a possibility to just look out your window and create a story, but I had never really thought about actually using the technique. After seeing this quote it made me want to look out my window and write a story. I didn't though. I have blogging to do first.

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 20, 2007 1:05 PM.

The previous post in this blog was You just can't win.

The next post in this blog is Some good deeds are punished.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.