Writers on Writing
“Write what you know. Every guide for the aspiring author advises this. Because I live in a long-settled rural place, I know certain things. I know the feel of a newborn lamb’s damp, tight-curled fleece and the sharp sound a well-bucket chain makes as it scrapes on stone. But more than these material things, I know the feelings that flourish in small communities. And I know other kinds of emotional truths that I believe apply across the centuries.” (July 2001) ~ Geraldine Brooks
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✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Approaching the Act of Writing
“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair — the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.” —Stephen King , On Writing
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ You are Your Experience; It Shapes Your Writing
“A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
~ Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty-Four Conversations with Borges, Including a Selection of Poems : Interviews by Roberto Alifano, 1981–1983
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ The Task of Writing
“You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.”
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Non Linear Story Creation
“Don’t set out to write something from beginning to end. A story is meant to be read from front to back, but not necessarily created that way.” ~ Chuck Sambuchino
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Permission to Stuff Yourself
““If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed quickly, to trap them before they escape.” ~ Ray Bradbury
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Searching for a Story Idea?
“Every idea is my last. I feel sure of it. So, I try to do the best with each as it comes and that’s where my responsibility ends. But I just don’t wait for ideas. I look for them. Constantly. And if I don’t use the ideas that I find, they’re going to quit showing up.” ~ Peg Bracken
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Trust Yourself
“Trust your idea, and just start writing. It can seem like a huge task, especially if you have had your work commissioned and there is a relatively fixed deadline, but once you start putting words on the page it will come together, and there is always someone you can ask for a little bit of support.” ~ Jaime Breitnauer
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Learn to Let Go
“Learn to let go. Let go of old drafts that aren’t going anywhere, or scenes that don’t work. Don’t spend months tweaking a fundamentally flawed project when you can move on to the wonderful new projects that are percolating in your head. The ‘you must start what you finish’ attitude—although admirable—can actually be a pitfall, because it prevents you from taking a necessary course correction when you need it.” ~ Leslie Lutz
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ 3 Steps To Improve Your Writing
Becoming a Good Writer
You get good at writing by following these three simple steps:
1) Write a lot. The more you write, the more you’ll tune in to your unique voice and the better you’ll get.
2) Get critiqued occasionally. You should never pay any attention to what your mother says about your writing, or what anyone who loves you says about your writing, because all those people are liars. You should pay attention only to people who know what good writing is and who also know how to critique bad writing. Many who know good writing don’t have any idea how to critique bad writing and will not be able to help you.Also be aware that many people who know how to critique bad writing would not recognize good writing if it stabbed them in the eye. This is tragic, but deal with it. You are looking for somebody who has both of these skills, and those people are rare.
3) Study the craft of writing in books, lectures, or wherever else you can learn it. You most especially need to do this after getting critiqued.You can’t figure it out on your own. Find a book that explains in clear words how to do right what you are doing wrong. When you finish the book, you will again believe in yourself enough to go back to step 1 and write a bunch more.
