Introduction to MIR 2 by Sarah Waters

An extract from the introduction to issue 2 of The Mechanics' Institute Review by Sarah Waters.

I've always been intrigued by the metaphors authors use to describe their own creative process.

A historian friend once told me that writing, for her, felt like carrying a wobbly load across a tightrope. Another friend described the experience as being like plate-spinning: no sooner had he got one bit of his novel whirling than he had to dash to another bit and whip up that. Other authors talk about writing as if it's like throwing darts with a blindfold on; or building houses of cards. And personally I've always pictured myself, when writing, as a sculptor, scratching ineptly away at a block of stone with some small, inadequate tool.

On good days I'm pretty certain that the block of stone contains a statue which, with perseverance, I will eventually uncover; my deeper and more insistent fear is that the stone holds nothing at all: that I will scratch and scratch until all I've got left in front of me is a heap of sand.

Introduction © 2005 by Sarah Waters