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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.

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
Music
Great
Writing
Really
Motivator
Way
Specific
Mood
Scene
Listen

More quotes by Jeff VanderMeer

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I had learned so much about the world that I had decided to withdraw from it.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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If the reader enters a kind of immersive experience reading a book, then I have to enter a kind of immersive state to do my best work.
Jeff VanderMeer
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History has shown us all too often the consequences of dreaming poorly or not at all.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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My mom is an artist and my own fiction is deeply visual.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?
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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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My singing ability is zilch.
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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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A lot of the creature comforts and the things we take for granted, are not sustainable, especially at current population levels. And so, it's not just simply a matter of changing over to solar. It's a matter of changing our philosophies. Of learning to live, more or less, mid- or post-apocalyptic, whatever apocalyptic means.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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.
Jeff VanderMeer
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I believe the best creative writing lessons live in the specifics.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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. I've learned that the more I collaborate, like by having someone do a soundtrack to one of my books, the more I see my own work differently.
Jeff VanderMeer
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When they give you things, ask yourself why. When you're grateful to them for giving you the things you should have anyway, ask yourself why.
Jeff VanderMeer
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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?
Jeff VanderMeer