slinkyinky:

whimsicalitywheee:

kristinalmeister:

keybladewyvern:

claricechiarasorcha:

ryntaia:

sirikenobi167:

unforth-ninawaters:

seananmcguire:

possiblestalker:

indianajjones:

opalescentlesbian:

entropyalarm:

katfiction2001:

“writers always know exactly where they are going with their work!”

r u sure

“no writer does anything by mistake, it’s all very strategic”

r u sure

“they use symbolism in everything. for example, a simple sentence symbolises directness and-”

R U SURE

The best moments in writing is when you discover you did something absolutely genius by complete accident.

A miscellaneous world-building detail from ten chapters earlier accidentally saved a character’s life once

“Omg this line is genius and the best reference!”
“Thank you I did that entirely on purpose!!” *sweats*

READER: “(points out symbolism and foreshadowing and depth)”

AUTHOR:

I once literally flipped a coin to decide which character was going to die in a multi-award-nominated novel.

I was once rereading a manuscript before editing it and discovered that in an early chapter I’d put in a line without any forethought that ended up aligning perfectly the plot and is now my favorite line in the entire book even though when I wrote that sentence I hadn’t even come up with that plot point yet.

In my book series, I have done various things on accident and then, looking back, yelled BRILLIANT and went with it. And, often times, my characters just DECIDE things, like one character was in love with another and I was “WHAT?” but went with it because it was actually a VERY good story and made some of the plot stuff that much more interesting. 

If you ever wanted to know my creative process for writing, congratulations, this is it. 

Writing a story like

There’s an author’s note in an Isaac Asimov short story collection – Isaac Asimov, mind you – and I can’t for the life of me remember which it was because my mom has a billion of them, but basically he went to a lecture on his books where the teaccher was lecturing on all the symbolism and themes and such and Asimovewent up to him and was just like “Uhhhh…. I didn’t put any of that in? It just…. no? Not really?”

And the lecturer legit looked ISAAC FUCKING ASIMOV straight in the eye and said, “What do you know, sir? You’re just the author.”

And Asimov described it as being a fairly profound moment in his career.

This is all completely true.

this is all very very true

The Isaac Asimov story is great because it underscores how meaning is made. No, the author didn’t necessarily intend every single bit of symbolism you found in your attempts to write that academic paper. That doesn’t mean the symbolism isn’t there! Meaning, themes, symbolism – these things happen consciously and unconsciously, purposefully and by accident. Meaning is a group effort and constantly shifting. If you can make the case for the existence of a theme or symbol and you have enough evidence, then it doesn’t matter what the author intended! It’s there anyway.