““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
voice
✒️ 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.
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Feel What You Write
Writer’s Tip
“I used to be a documentary filmmaker, and a film director once told me: ‘You can’t make a good film unless your hands tremble behind the camera.’ Let us write stories that move us to the core, because when our pen is trembling, the reader can feel it, too.” ~ Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Run Your Own Race
“Run your own race. Don’t worry about how fast someone else writes, how much another author makes, how many followers another author has. Write what makes you excited, and the enthusiasm will come through on the page.” ~ Christina Lauren
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Don’t Quit, Ignore the Naysayers
“Don’t give up, and don’t lose your stubborn belief that you have a story worth telling. I’ve had so many people tell me over so many years that I didn’t have the qualities needed to be a writer. All of my writer friends and I have one thing in common: We didn’t listen to the naysayers. We kept writing. And eventually we have all been published.” ~ Devi S. Laskar
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Write Every Day
“Getting into the habit of sitting down and writing every day is essential.
A writer is someone who writes, and the only path to improving your craft and finding both satisfaction and success in your writing is to keep doing it.
Try to write at the same time each day, and don’t worry too much about whether what your writing is good or not — just keep writing.”
~ Joel Friedlander
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ You Can’t Edit a Blank Page, Write
“Schedule time to write, show up for that meeting with yourself, and put words onto the page. It doesn’t matter if those words aren’t very good — they probably won’t be, but that’s OK because you can make them better when you edit them later. But you can’t edit a blank page, so get your butt into the chair and write!”
~ Joanna Penn
