Writing should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us. –Franz Kaftka
Personally, this quote seems to be getting at a truth that many other writers have also quoted; that is, that writing is not the destination, or the final truth, it is a means of drilling through the layers of bullshit and all that, to get at what we really want to say, but don’t know it. The image of the author, standing on the surface of his own frozen sea, hacking away furiously, at times maniacally, is actually pretty hilarious. Yet strangely appropriate. There certainly are times when writing takes on a similar sense of desperate urgency.
The writer hacking away at a sea of ice is pretty hilarious. I agree- writing does (or should) embody that sense of urgency, sometimes, of desperation. It’s frightening to think of the sea underneath this poor writer, trembling, and waiting for the slightest fissure to erupt in his face.
What I like about this quote is also that it implies that writing is work- you have to hack it out. Though divine inspiration is lovely and wonderful- to really find what we mean we have to be willing to work for it. When something is well articulated, it generally didn’t spill out that way. There was a certain level of hacking away, trimming off the unnecessary pieces involved.
Word.