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After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what i'm going to write" - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. i feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and i know that the details are there already, that in fact i would see them plainly if i looked closer, but i prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me.

-Vladimir Nabokov

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After The First Shock Of Recognition -

Vladimir Nabokov

After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what i'm going to write" - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. i feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and i know that the details are there already, that in fact i would see them plainly if i looked closer, but i prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me.

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    <p style="font-size: 1.2rem; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 10px;">"after the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of &quot;this is what i&amp;#039;m going to write&quot; - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. i feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and i know that the details are there already, that in fact i would see them plainly if i looked closer, but i prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me."</p>
    <footer style="font-size: 1rem; font-weight: bold;">— Vladimir Nabokov</footer>
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Inspiration Writing Waiting

More From Vladimir Nabokov

If you look at coastlines, if you look at that them from far away, from an airplane, well, you don't see details, you see a certain complication. when you come closer, the complication becomes more local, but again continues. and come closer and closer and closer, the coastline becomes longer and longer and longer because it has more detail entering in.

I like "rock, paper, scissors two-thirds." you know. "rock breaks scissors." "these scissors are bent. they're destroyed. i can't cut stuff. so i lose." "scissors cuts paper." "these are strips. this is not even paper. it's gonna take me forever to put this back together." "paper covers rock." "rock is fine. no structural damage to rock. rock can break through paper at any point. just say the word. paper sucks." there should be "rock, dynamite with a cutable wick, scissors."

Sam fuller and 'shock corridor' can only be conjured as a mantra. 'shock corridor' is a classic work of art - it's unique. it comes from the unique experience of being sam fuller and yes, there's always that element of 'shock corridor' hovering around the picture, but never specifically. in fact, i didn't even screen it because it's in us. it's in me anyway. it's in me. it was a way of conjuring up support just by saying the name, 'shock corridor,' as i was going to shoot. poor sam [fuller]...

It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. i can do a book of nonfiction work that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, i know i can do it. but a novel is different. a novel is more like falling in love. you don't say, 'i'm going to fall in love next tuesday, i'm going to begin my novel.' the novel has to come to you. it has to feel just like love.

How many mysteries have you seen in your lifetime? how many nets pulled full over the boat's side, each silver body ready or not falling into submission? how many roses in early summer uncurling above the pale sands then falling back in unfathomable willingness? and what can you say? glory to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the silver fish. glory to time and the wild fields, and to joy. and to grief's shock and torpor, its near swoon.

We may... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth... the developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. but nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything.

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Each time i undertake to reread virginia woolf, i am somewhat baffled by the signature breathlessness and relentlessly "poetic" tone, the shimmering impressionism, so very different from the vivid, precise, magisterial (and often very funny) prose of her contemporary james joyce.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

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