Lore Segal on Failing and Failing Again
January 6, 2021
People ask how writers get their ideas. From 8 am to 1 o’clock, I tell my interlocutor, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, I sit at my desk and write (at an income, if my arithmetic serves me, of 1 dollar and 82 cents an hour) but when you ask me how I get ideas, my mind is empty.
As a writer I think of myself an expert of mind
fullness. Whatever I experience, whether of pleasure, anxiety, sadness, puzzlement, or the day’s nasty news will agitate to understand itself in words, and what demands expression today is the consciousness of an empty mind.