When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that’s all you are – a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen.
Hilary Mantel
When you have committed enough words to paper
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In the late 90s I was part of a critique group online. Each person had their own style of critiquing a story.
One guy wrote what I call “negative” critiques. He would fillet the story, removing the “spine” leaving only the meat. He never saw actual problems that needed to be fixed, only the need to remove what made the story work.
– Without that “spine” you have no Story.
I see the image that Mantel created as something elemental. A living form sculpted, ready to be fleshed out, rising out of the Imaginal Realm.