Still Writing: The Pleasures And Perils Of A Creative Life - Plot & Excerpts
Some of us can conjugate verbs in three languages, or understand particle physics. Maybe we went to Ivy League schools, or are members of Mensa. But being wicked smart won’t help you when you’re following a line of words on the page. In fact, being that kind of smart can turn out to be a problem. I know a few writers—intellectual, erudite people—whose work suffers for their brilliance. Though there is no such thing as too smart to be, say, a rocket scientist or a neurosurgeon, it is indeed possible to be too smart to be a writer. 149 Dani Shapiro When it comes to storytelling (and it’s all storytelling) I often tell my students that we need to be dumb like animals. Storytelling iself is primal. It’s the way we’ve always come to understand the world around us—whether recited around a campfire, or read aloud in an East Village bar. And so it stands to reason that in order to tell our stories, we tap into something beyond the intellect—an understanding deeper than anything we can willfully engage.
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