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
Aids
Mood
Evokes
Overcoming
Overcomes
Build
Evoke
Especially
Editor
Character
Internals
Music
Internal
Trying
Editors

More quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

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So many differing opinions and philosophies... are rarely housed under the roof of a single magazine.
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The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se.
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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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My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.
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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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My singing ability is zilch.
Jeff VanderMeer
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If I wasn't a writer, I don't know what I'd be. Probably a marine biologist or something.
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Film fixes a precise visual image in the viewer's head. In fiction, you just hope you're precise enough to convey the intended effect.
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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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Who had the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure or the one who endured?
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The stories in Get In Trouble confirm once again that Kelly Link is a modern virtuoso of the form-playful and subversive required reading for anyone who loves short fiction.
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History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.
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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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I believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.
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It is the nature of the writer to question the validity of his world and yet rely on his senses to describe it. From what other tension can great literature be born?
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If I could play an instrument, it would probably be a cello or an electric guitar.
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There's also a lot of gritty Americana type of bands. I actually have a lot of Britpop on my iPod, too.
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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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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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The world is a mysterious place and the very limitation of our senses in exploring it means we are sometimes aware of there being something beyond our ken.
Jeff VanderMeer