Pullman's Writing

"I write with a ballpoint pen on A4 sized narrow-lined paper. The paper has got to have a grey or blue margin and two holes. I only write on one side, and when I've got to the bottom of the last page, I finish the sentence (or write one more) at the top of the next, so that the paper I look at each morning isn't blank. It's already beaten. That number of pages amounts, in my writing, to about 1100 words."-- Taken from Pullman's website.

I found this little section pretty interesting. One of the most provoking passages is where Pullman notes that, by writing, the paper is "already beaten". I found this notion of the paper as something that requires it to be beater as highly revealing of Pullman's feelings towards his work. I've never really thought that a creative writer would view his/her work as "beating" it. I guess it seems that he should be saying that his writing is like "creating art" or something like that. I guess when I think of writers I don't really consider them to be at odds with the process in which they do their work, but rather in a sort of harmony with it. Perhaps though, Phillip Pullman might say that writing a novel is sort of the same as reading it: it's like a journey in which you will not always be shown the clear and obvious path. Rather, you will need to actually struggle along with it and "beat" the challanges you encounter-- the blank page. The infinite possibility. The time constraints. Everything that makes it hard to write. However, as we have learned in the class, we should trust the tale and not the teller. Maybe then, it is not "the point" to look at the context of how the story was spun, but at the story itself after it's creation.



"I write books that children read. Some clever adults read them too."-- Phillip Pullman