Joy Williams
Joy Williams
Joy Williamsis an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 February 1944
CountryUnited States of America
writing process writing-process
There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process.
dark people ordinary
What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibi lity of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes...
writing grace doe
Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve--hopeless ly he writes in the hope that he might serve--not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace that knows us.
night
Words at night were feral things.
writing care these-days
It's become fashionable these days to say that the writer writes because he is not whole, he has a wound, he writes to heal it, but who cares if the writer is not whole; of course the writer is not whole, or even particularly well.
beautiful morning writing
The writer trusts nothing she writes-it should be too reckless and alive for that, it should be beautiful and menacing and slightly out of control. . . . Good writing . . . explodes in the reader's face. Whenever the writer writes, it's always three or four or five o'clock in the morning in her head.
mean worry why-things-happen
You must stop worrying about why things happen and wonder what they mean when they do.
stories doe said
The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what's being said before the writer figures out how to say it.
writing dark light
A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light.
giving-up tired heart
Someone once told me a story about long term relationships. To think of them as a continent to explore. I could spend a lifetime backpacking through Africa, and I would still never know all there is to know about that continent. To stay the course, to stay intentional, to stay curious and connected - that's the heart of it. But it's so easy to lose track of the trail, to get tired, to want to give up, or to want a new adventure. It can be so easy to lose sight of the goodness and mystery within the person sitting right in front of you.