"Don’t go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can’t rush inspiration. … Once your subject finds you, it’s like falling in love. It will be your constant companion. Shadowing you, peeping in your windows, calling you at all hours to leave messages like, 'Only you understand me.'"
This is from a recent New York times piece by Colson Whitehead, How to Write, in which he offers his 6 Rules for writing. The above is rule No 2. The piece is witty and wise - well worth reading in full.
As with all such 'rules' some will chime with what you're doing, some, inevitably, are key to that particular writer. Whitehead's No 2 spoke to me about the project I'm working on at the moment - the subject really won't leave me alone!
I'm also reminded that each writer drafts their own rules and that all rules are made to be broken, sometimes.
It's also worth a look for the sharp illustrations by Joon Mo Kang that catch those moments in the writing day that I think many would recognise.
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