Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Advice from Muriel Spark, circa 1988

Muriel Spark, 1960



"...So I passed him some very good advice, that if you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat.  Alone with a cat in the room where you work, I explained, the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk-lamp.  The light from a lamp, I explained, gives a cat great satisfaction.  The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding.  And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost.  You need not watch the cat all the time."



and...
Muriel Spark, shortly before her death in 2010


"'You are writing a letter to a friend,' was the sort of thing I used to say.  'And this is a dear and close friend, real--or better--invented in your mind like a fixation. Write privately, not publicly; without fear or timidity, right to the end of the letter, as if it was never going to be published, so that your true friend will read it over and over, and then want more enchanting letters from you.  Now, you are not writing about the relationship between your friend and yourself; you take that for granted.  You are only confiding an experience that you think only he would enjoy reading. What you have to say will come out more spontaneously and honestly than if you are thinking of numerous readers.'"

[Excerpted from A Far Cry From Kensington, by Muriel Spark. New Directions, 2000.]
 

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