A famous author once said that as we improve our skills and craft as writers, “We begin wrestling with stronger angels.”
Which angel(s) are you currently wrestling with in your work?
Note: If anyone knows the name of the author that gave that quote, let us know his name in the comments. Google search is being absolutely no help this morning.
Might you be referring to Wrestling With Your Angels: A Spiritual Journey to Great Writing?
I think it was a male author I was thinking about, but I’m sure the basic idea is the same! As we become better writers, we start taking on greater challenges in our writing, wrestling them to the ground.
Word count. I used to have no problem making 90K or more words. It’s not like I was blathering and had a lot of unnecessary verbiage. I’m a tech writer and tend to write lean. But after studying some Margie Lawson writing lessons pointed at sentence level, my style has changed and my word count runs short. It’s nice to write clean and concise; I wish I’d realized in the outlining phase that I’d need an extra six to eight chapters to make my target word count.
Kathy
I struggle with word count too. Except, oddly, when I was writing my first short story. I think I chafed at the constraint and ultimately turned in a novella.
The fear of the rolling eyes.
The perpetual worry I am boring people.
My angel has a mean streak. It’s the one that makes people write that I make too much fun of people in my books. But maybe I’ve gone over to the other side…I don’t even try to beat that angel down. My main character is snarky as hell and (hopefully) that’s part of her charm. If she offends someone who has an outburst online, I apologize and suggest my critic visit the Chicken Soup for the Soul section next time.
Is this the quote?
“Artistic temperament… sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling. When the bright angel dominates, out comes a great work of art, a Michelangelo David or a Beethoven symphony.”
Madeleine L’Engle, from A Severed Wasp (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1982)
That’s a beautiful quote. I think I ran across the one I’m thinking of in some kind of writing forum years ago, so maybe it didn’t even get get quoted correctly. If nobody claims it, I’m going to steal it. 🙂
That is a beautiful quote! Thanks. I’m putting that in my Quote Box.
Wow, what a good question for a Friday. I like it because yes, the better we get the better we want to get.
My opponent angel right now is originality. I am sort of weary of the usual tropes of our genre. (I hate that word “trope” but it’s useful here). I am looking for new paths, trying to stretch myself in style and voice. I can write, fairly easily now, the books I have written for the last ten years. And while I recognize my readers expect exactly that kind of book (and thank god for them), I really want to try the road not taken for a change.
I might get lost, but hey, at least the scenery will be different!
That’s a big, scary one–one that I have wrestled with (so far unsuccessfully) myself. I have a drawer full of battles with that angel.
Kathryn: I think the source of your quote is Basil Sands or someone pretending to be him.
Nothing would surprise me, Jim!
But the angel I was referring to was my old neighbor Angel Menendez, who worked on his Harley at night when I’m writing.
Never wrestle a man named Angel…See the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”.
The same angel. Having something to say.
I’d get cranky with that angel, myself. I get along better with the Angel of Entertainment than the Angel of Big, Important Messages.
The quote sounds like an allusion to the Biblical account in Genesis of Jacob wrestling with the angel. I always found this account interesting. He didn’t wrestle with the devil, but with the angels– God himself. I think it’s the fear of where we must go and what we must do to accomplish our mission in life that scares us most.
Sounds like every time I sit down at my computer, trying to be open to what I need to write, what needs to be read. How can I be a conduit for that message?
Funny thing about angels: My first novel was a story very similar to the movie City of Angels (male and female protagonists reversed–but do angels have sex?). I wrote this the summer I turned thirteen. It was terrible and I tossed it when I left for college. But I do remember wrestling with my angel character–she was very strong-willed and definitely boxed me into corners I didn’t want to be in. Over the years, I’ve learned how to live better with my characters! And then there’s my thriller Angels Need Not Apply….
I believe that when Angels have sex, they have violated the Angel Code of Ethics, and are sent down for “rehab” to Earth, where they have fun giving us a hard time.
The WIP I just finished, the romantic subplot gave me grief. The one I’m planning, the twists of the political mystery is giving me grief. Trying to challenge myself every new story, and maybe readers will enjoy it.
My WIP contains 3 intertwined stories that draw together over a series of 3 books. The angel of doubt , a very mean spirited fallen angel he is, keeps assailling me with the boisterous and abusive cry of “Do you really think you can pull this off, bub?”
But I keep banging at it and find that wearing my Bose noise cancelling headphones with a bit of jazz in the background quiets the voice long enough that my muses can sneak up behind him and throw a sack over his head and pull the feathers out of his raven black wings until he runs away whimpering.
Learning to apply to writing the facts of life related to a radically changed readership. How changed? By growing up with visual media, in particular the editing techniques used in TV production, aimed at keeping people from using the remote. And that last sentence shows how far I have yet to go.
A famous author once said that as we improve our skills and craft as writers, “We begin wrestling with stronger angels. angel card readings