a poet’s notebook

MFK FISHER on not writing

4 ashes, berries, snow

"I think that many people want to write, but of them few have the will to. I write more than half the things I do or say or think. I can see the words on the sheet of paper and see the pen writing them. And in my head a voice, a kind of silent reading voice, reads them not from but to the paper. Often what is read is good. There is a quick sureness about some phrases. At times they come too patly, with a smart-aleck tone. But I don’t write. I write a few letters, which grow less interesting as I age. But that is all. It is because I am lazy, and that is true of most of the people who think in prose. Laziness and a vague fear."

    MFK Fisher    Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me: journals and stories 1933-1941

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One response to “MFK FISHER on not writing”

  1. belledame222 Avatar

    Love MFK Fisher. One of my very favorite writers, in fact.

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