Jondra
Initiate
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Registered: 08-2006
Location: Texas
Posts: 16
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Not SciFi or Fantasy
I’m reading Agatha Christi’s Autobiography and this quote has inspired me. She writes of the creative process, “but then there always has to be a lapse of time after the accomplishment of a piece of creative work before you can in any way evaluate it. You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence…If you are properly modest you will never write at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start in an exercise book buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don’t see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know that it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later you wonder whether it may not be all right after all.
Are any of us "properly modest"? 
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Perspective
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9/19/2006, 2:21 am
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Firlefanz
Lady of the Land
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Registered: 05-2003
Location: Germany
Posts: 1789
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Re: Not SciFi or Fantasy
Oh, I hope not in the sense that Agatha Christie used there!
She is absolutely right, though. Writing and finishing a story is a process of ups and downs, and evaluation is only possible after gaining some distance. (And even then I often find it hard. That's why crits are so important.)
Thank you for that quote! 
--- - Firlefanz
Reading: "Seide und Schwert" by Kai Mayer
Writing: Rewrite of the Unicorn Girl YA novel
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9/19/2006, 7:30 am
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