We skipped a week of these excerpts because we figured most would be up to their eyelids in cranberry sauce, turkey, dressing, and holiday guests and there would be little to no time for the sitting down and letting your thoughts move through your pencil onto page or for your putting of fingers to keyboard. But we do want to continue on with more words from John Steinbeck's, Journal of a Novel. I am learning more and more from these and from the ones that don't relate directly to writing, it is so interesting to sit inside the mind of someone who created so much and think for a brief moment about the thoughts they once thought. Hope you enjoy these.
"And on my way to bed I was torn out of my pattern. I never write out of hours. But I came in and wrote the dialogue of Sam'l Hamilton which is in today's work--it tore out so rapidly that the words are nearly unreadable. It is a completely passionate piece of writing." pg 100
"I have sharpened up a new 12 of pencils, fine long ones. This is a kind of indulgence. How I love a new pencil." pg. 100
"And now I have set down in my own hand the 16 verses of Cain and Abel and the story changes with flashing lights when you write it down. And I think I have a title at last, a beautiful title, EAST OF EDEN. And read the 16th verse to find it. And the Salinas Valley is surely East of Eden." pg. 104
"You can see that my handwriting is a little haywire yet. So I will have to dawdle until it settles down. Change of desk has something to do with it I guess. I have a little room to work in and it is mine exclusively and I can look at the ocean out of my window. It has a desk to work on--not a titling desk, but an ordinary one. I will soon get used to that, I think. the question is one of rhythm. After a break, it takes time to get it moving in waves again. But that is simply a matter of keeping at it." pg. 105
"One is never drained by work but only by idleness. Lack of work is the most enervating thing in the world" pg. 115.
"It is the fashion now in writing to have every man defeated. and I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name a dozen who were not and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is of battles--the defeated are forgotten, only the winners come themselves into the race. And Samuel I am going to try to make into one of those pillars of fire by whom little and frightened men are guided through the darkness." pg. 115
Hope you enjoy,
David
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