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Quote by Billy Marshall-Stoneking

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Singing the snake: Poems from the western desert, 1979-1988

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Billy Marshall-Stoneking

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“Some writers might tell you that writing is like a piece of magic - a process of creating something out of nothing, and I guess I used to think about it that way too a long long time ago. But as I've lived my life and loved and lost friends and family, and seen dreams smashed and resurrected, and marveled at the pettiness, drear ambition and ignorance of the herd of which I am a part, I can no longer say that a poem or a story or a script comes from nothing. If it's any good, if it has any power, any potent emotional body, then it's something that a writer has paid for, not only in time, but in all the anxiety that accompanies living and those small fret-filled acts of becoming present that make it possible for us to see beyond our little patch of immediacy. It's not just a reaching out, but a reaching in, into the depths of our being from whence we've sprung.”

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“There are far too many screenwriters who have made themselves honorary “secret” members of the Audience Protection Society (APS). Of course, they’re easy to spot, which makes their membership in this group anything but secret. They write as if they are duty bound to protect their readers from the nastiness of ruthless drama. The way they see it, if they’re going to go to the trouble of creating loveable and attractive characters why throw them to blood-thirsty apes, or have them face a fate worse than death? They tell themselves that such actions would offend their audience’s sensibilities, but really it’s their own fears and prejudices they can’t cope with, not to mention those nagging insecurities concerning their ability to write credible characters in the grip of extreme emotion. They’d rather be dead than write cheese.”

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“Fear is elemental to every human endeavour involving risk and change, which includes ALL creative endeavours. To be creative is to be anxious. To endure the anxiousness - to face it and work with it, to allow it to lay bare what has been hidden - is the beginning of faith, which, in a certain sense, is the courage to become, to become present, along with all the other characters, tribes and audiences whose actions move the unfolding drama that is the world.”

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