“Read, read, read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” ~ William Faulkner
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✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Little Arrogance Isn’t a Bad Thing
“The most helpful quality a writer can cultivate is self-confidence – arrogance, if you can manage it. You write to impose yourself on the world, and you have to believe in your own ability when the world shows no sign of agreeing with you.” ~ Hilary Mantel
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ How do you Write?
“How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. … If you practice an art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.” ~ William Saroyan
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Do You Want the Muse to Visit You?
“If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. The consistency, the monotony, the certainty, all vagaries and passions are covered by this daily reoccurrence. You don’t go to a well once but daily. You don’t skip a child’s breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning. Sleep comes to you each day, and so does the muse.” ~ Walter Mosley
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Why Do You Write?
“I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.” ~ Alice Hoffman
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Don’t Compare Yourself
“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces. If your inner critic continues to plague you with invidious comparisons, scream, ‘Ancestor worship!’ and leave the building.” ~ Allegra Goodman
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Writing What You Know
“”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.” ~ Geraldine Brooks
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Story’s First Line
“But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” ~ Stephen King
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ The Purpose of Writing
“Writing . . . is about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Do You Identify with Your Characters?
“Part of me becomes the characters I’m writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.” ~ Louis Sachar
