"Every time I write something down I check it to see if it has that telltale glow, the glow that tells me there's something there. If it glows, it stays. Everything is either on or off"
About this Quote
Woodring treats creativity less like self-expression and more like electrical work: a circuit either completes or it doesn’t. That “telltale glow” is a beautifully unromantic metaphor for artistic intuition. It’s not inspiration as thunderbolt or muse; it’s a diagnostic light, a small, verifiable signal that something alive is happening on the page. The drama is in the restraint: he isn’t chasing quantity, he’s hunting for charge.
The subtext is a quiet hostility to “pretty good.” By framing the decision as “on or off,” Woodring rejects the comforting middle zone where most drafts languish. There’s a discipline here that feels almost mechanical, but it’s actually a defense of mystery. He can’t fully explain what the glow is, yet he trusts it more than intention, theme, or even effort. In a culture that constantly demands process transparency (talk about your influences, justify your choices, show your work), Woodring is describing a private standard that resists rationalization.
Context matters: as an artist associated with surreal, wordless, or near-wordless visual storytelling, he’s working in a register where meaning often arrives as sensation before it becomes legible. The “glow” is the moment an image stops being a drawing and starts acting like a dream: it pulls, it unsettles, it insists. Woodring’s binary isn’t simplistic; it’s ruthless. It suggests that art’s real quality control isn’t external approval but an internal, almost bodily recognition that the work has crossed from constructed to charged.
The subtext is a quiet hostility to “pretty good.” By framing the decision as “on or off,” Woodring rejects the comforting middle zone where most drafts languish. There’s a discipline here that feels almost mechanical, but it’s actually a defense of mystery. He can’t fully explain what the glow is, yet he trusts it more than intention, theme, or even effort. In a culture that constantly demands process transparency (talk about your influences, justify your choices, show your work), Woodring is describing a private standard that resists rationalization.
Context matters: as an artist associated with surreal, wordless, or near-wordless visual storytelling, he’s working in a register where meaning often arrives as sensation before it becomes legible. The “glow” is the moment an image stops being a drawing and starts acting like a dream: it pulls, it unsettles, it insists. Woodring’s binary isn’t simplistic; it’s ruthless. It suggests that art’s real quality control isn’t external approval but an internal, almost bodily recognition that the work has crossed from constructed to charged.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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