I love collecting quotes, so much in fact that I have a whole file on my computer dedicated to them. I collect mostly quotes that inspire and motivate me, or that speak some truth about writing, life, and creativity. Scrolling through them never fails to inspire me. However, sometimes I stumble across a quote that makes me think a little harder about what it actually means. Most recently, it’s been this quote by Saul Bellow that goes, “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” On a first read through (and a second a third, because maybe I’m oblivious?) I wondered why this was such a popular quote. Just because you write something at a certain hour doesn’t mean that it’s going to automatically be a work of genius. Most of what I’ve written at night is gibberish.
But maybe what this quote is talking about is not the time of day exactly. Maybe it’s talking about how, in the dark of night, when you’re sitting at your computer and you’re alone and a bit tired, you have a tendency to write things that maybe, if it were daylight and other people were around, you might not write otherwise. Sure, you might be cranking out typo filled pages, or jotting down half formed ideas that are going nowhere. But at the same time, it’s easier to be more open and vulnerable. The filter between your brain and the page becomes a little less strict when you’re tired and it’s dark and quiet. You might find yourself writing down things that are a little more personal, a little closer to your heart, then you normally would.
To me, this is what this quote is talking about. It’s not saying that if you do your writing near midnight then you’ll never have to edit your work. Anything you write at any time of day is likely to need a lot of work. That’s just the nature of writing. No, to me, what this quote is saying is that what you write when you’re tired, the things you pour out from your heart that capture a little piece of your soul, that’s what you don’t have to change. Maybe the words you use to frame them might change a little. Maybe you might have to tighten your writing up, cutting back extraneous words to get to the very heart of what you’re trying to say. But that little piece of your truth that you spill out when you’re being completely open and honest, that’s the bit that doesn’t have to change.
When I interpret this quote now, what I see it as saying is that you don’t have to change what you write when you’re open and vulnerable and speaking from your heart. If we allow ourselves to delve into our own truths, to write with our emotions and spill our secrets onto the page then we capture the essence of something that others will be able to relate to, something that will call out to our readers in a way that we might not be able to manage when we’re criticising our own work and stifling it before it has a chance to bloom. Because writing honestly and from the heart is hard. It’s so much easier to hide behind the words instead of using them to reveal a piece of ourselves, whether that’s in fiction, or non-fiction. You can share truth and honesty through novels just as well as anywhere.
Sometimes writing something that will touch people’s heart means taking a risk and opening yourself up, a risk that we can only take when the critic in our minds is turned off, when the waiting judge goes to bed. Some things you write in the dark so that they can be seen in the daylight as a little piece of truth, a little piece of you. And when you write something true, though you might have to mould the shape a little, you never have to change its core.
Do you find yourself writing more personal things when it’s late at night? How do you turn off your inner critic so that you can write honestly and openly? What does this quote mean to you? What quotes have you found yourself reading and going ‘this is a nice idea but-‘? Let’s chat!
