Let me just say I can’t find the quote anywhere so I can’t give credit where credit is due. I have found it applies to my writing lately and it goes something like this:
When working with clay, the sculptor starts small and makes the shape bigger. With stone, the sculptor starts large and takes pieces away.
A good way to understand this is to think about scuplting a human mouth. With clay, the first thing to do would be to make a small hole and slowly expand the space until the mouth is formed. With stone, the mouth is made by carving out a large section then whittling away until only the mouth is left.
This concept has been in my mind as I write my third book and the words are pouring out. During my second pass I will have to distill all this material down to the essential. Writing my first two books was the opposite. With each I started with a shorter draft and had to expand the world by adding more details during the rewrite. I’m curious to see how the quality of this third book stacks up to the first two!
If anyone knows where this quote comes from please let me know so I can attribute it to the source.
