Quotes about writ
writing animal thinking
I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are. Douglas Coupland
writing hair necks
If the hairs on my neck stand up while Im writing, I figure the reader will get the same kind of shock. Andrew Pyper
writing discovery self
Writing a novel is an act of self-annihilation as much as self-discovery. You can kill whole appetites and flood whole depths while plumbing them, but if you are serious about it you also get to put something into the world that wasn't quite there before. Andrew O'Hagan
writing thinking sometimes
I don't freestyle, but when I'm writing and thinking, sometimes things pop up - that's basically a freestyle. Andre Benjamin
writing opposites grace
Don't outline your stories. A lot of fiction workshops say you should. I say the opposite. I quote Grace Paley: "We write what we don't know we know." Andre Dubus
writing thinking discovery
What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.
writing fog years
I'm one of those writers who can't talk about what they're working on. The entire four years I was writing 'House of Sand and Fog,' my wife never saw a word of it. I just have to keep it in the womb, and then everyone can have a crack at it.
writing
Even a day writing badly for me is 10 times better than a day where I don’t write at all.
writing years care
Don't quit. It's very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it's very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can't get fired if you don't write, and most of the time you don't get rewarded if you do. But don't quit.
writing thinking careers
If you don't put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There's the writer and there's the author. The author - you don't ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care - easier said than done.
writing years desire
I've learned over the years that the writing is smarter and far larger than the writer and his or her own desires for it.
writing silence trying
Short story writers simply do what human beings have always done. They write stories because they have to; because they cannot rest until they have tried as hard as they can to write the stories. They cannot rest because they are human, and all of us need to speak into the silence of mortality, to interrupt and ever so briefly stop that quiet flow, and with stories try to understand at least some of it.
writing life-is drag
One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can’t drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.
writing young-writers refrain
If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so. Andre Gide
writing thinking secret
The reasons that drive me to write are many and the most important are the most secret, I think. Perhaps most of all this: to put something out of death's reach.
writing generations substance
Enduring fame is promised only to those writers who can offer to successive generations a substance constantly renewed; for every generation arrives upon the scene with its own particular hunger.
writing literature produce
Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.
writing literature stories
What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told.
writing literature noble
It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
writing care irreplaceable
Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.
writing sometimes rage
Everybody has to write out of rage sometimes. Amy Clampitt
writing mad inspired
Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.
writing tasks left
Writing is a hellish task, best snuck up on, whacked on the head, robbed and left for dead. Ann-Marie MacDonald
writing mind
That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down. Ann Patchett
writing
Learn to write by writing
writing thoughtful thinking
I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what? In my life I have met astonishingly good people.
writing
I'm very comfortable writing.
writing thinking nashville
I think of Nashville as a very natural place. We're easy going, we are ourselves. There isn't a lot of preening or trying to impress. So it's an easy place to just be and that is a good state from which to write.
writing way another-life
I will write my way into another life.
writing emotional two
I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?
writing awful world
Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.
writing discovery output
I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing.
writing two trying
If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.