Quote

I see music as an aid. It overcomes my internal editor, especially when the music evokes the character or the mood I'm trying to build.

Jeff VanderMeer

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Jeff VanderMeer
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: July 7
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Bellefonte
Pennsylvania
Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer
Trying
Editors
Aids
Mood
Evokes
Overcoming
Overcomes
Build
Evoke
Especially
Editor
Character
Internals
Music
Internal

More quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

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I have always tended toward a lush prose style, but I take care to modulate it from story to story and to strip it down entirely when necessary.
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Once you realize there's less logic in human institutions than you once thought, you see the narrative potential in just about everything around you. Sometimes, in fact, it seems as if the human world runs on inefficiency and erratic behavior.
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You can either waste time worrying about a death that might not come or concentrate on what’s left to you.
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Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.
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The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.
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My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.
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Angela Carter, Leonora Carrington, even nonsurrealists like Kafka and Nabokov - writers like these, who create paths between the firmly grounded and flights of fantasy, are my personal North Star.
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I like to go through the zine sections of local bookstores when on the road and have found a lot of really great kind of underground stuff that way. It all feeds into everything else.
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I believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.
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I’ve got...ways of tricking my brain into getting what I need out of it
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What occurs after revelation and paralysis?
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I've always wrestled with the difference between plot and structure, and after re-reading a lot of writing books I realized I wasn't alone.
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My mother is an artist, and I have a strong visual sense. I almost always choose the cover art for my books.
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Angela Carter's fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can't point to any one thing. I just always loved books and writing.
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History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.
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But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?
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My parents read to me a lot as a kid, and I started writing very early, probably spurred on by Aesop's fables. Then they gave me The Lord of the Rings way too early for me to fully understand what I was reading, which was actually kind of cool. It was almost better - comprehension's overrated when you're reading.
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I always try to be alert to the potential for repetition, for a decaying orbit with regard to my use of technique, etc.
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I also am not particularly risk-averse - I don't mind jumping off a cliff if I trust the people who've told me they'll catch me at the bottom.
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Dreams, though, are just one kind of inspiration - no more or less special than something in a newspaper article or from the world around you sparking inspiration.
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