You Just Walk the Path

Inspirational words from Richard Bausch. This interview appeared years ago in Writer-- and I regularly share it with my writing students:

So when I sit down to write, I'm not thinking abut pulling stuff out of myself. I'm thinking about going somewhere, walking around, and seeing what I find. And there's never a time when I sit down and it isn't there. You just walk the path. There is a tremendous amount of work you can get done doing that. There is no part of that that's not fun. I never worry about whether or not it's good. I don't care, right then. I'm walking the path...I love William Stafford's advice . Someone asked, 'What do you do about writer's block?' Stafford said, 'Lower my standards and keep on going.' That's secretly such beautiful advice. What you get done really doesn't have only to do with how gifted you are, or how much ability you have; it has to do with your own attitude toward it....I don't really teach writing. I teach patience and toughness, stubbornness and willlinginess to make the mistakes and go on. And the willingness to look like an idiot sometimes. That's the only way any good thing ever get done, it seems to me.

--Richard Bausch