#339/365 Paintings

Katherine Anne Porter : NOTES ON WRITING

Berlin, December, 1931. From a letter to G.

… I can’t tell you what gives true intensity, but I know it when I find it, even in my own work—there perhaps first of all. It is not a matter of how you feel, at any one moment, certainly not at the moment of writing. Feeling is more than mood, it is a whole way of being, it is the nature you are born with, you cannot invent it. The question is, how to convey a sense of whatever is there, as a feeling, within you, to the reader;

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I love the searching in her words. I love the sentence, “Feeling is more than mood, it is a whole way of being, it is the nature you are born with, you cannot invent it.”

She goes on to talk about the technical aspects of conveying ‘yourself’ to the reader. That it’s a matter of rapt attention and ability development. Again, I just love the struggle and search for how to get closer to her reader. The need in it.