"On Not Winning the Nobel Prize"

From Doris Lessing's 2007 Nobel Lecture, given in acceptance of the Nobel Prize in Literature the same year she wrote The Cleft (click here for the New York Times review):

Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, "Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?" Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas - inspiration.

If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.

Read the full lecture here, or get it as a .pdf courtesy Nobelprize.org.

BTW: Orhan Pamuk's 2006 lecture - "My Father's Suitcase" - is also wonderful.