“Take your time. There’s no rush to get published. The more time you spend writing, reading, and learning to be a better writer, the better things will go for you. Don’t try to hurry it along.”
~ Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent
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✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Do You Have a Reading Habit?
What are You Reading?
Establish a reading habit that matches roughly what you hope to write and publish. Make it as important as anything else you schedule in your day, and never allow busyness to crowd out the time you devote to consuming other good works.
It’s fine not to finish books or to abandon authors you don’t like, but never stop consuming the genre you want become known in. It raises your writerly IQ and ultimately lays the foundation for better literary citizenship and networking with other authors, editors, and agents. A non-reader is soon outed and left behind in this business.
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Enjoy the Writing Journey
I would want my younger self to realize that as wonderful as publication is, it isn’t the point of the writing process. It’s just a stop along the road. Writing is more about the journey than the destination. As award-winning author Anne Lamott points out, “Being published isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Writing is.” So don’t let your non-published status get you down. Just enjoy where you are right now.” ~ K. M. Weiland
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ The Real Point of Writing
“Getting published is really exciting, but it’s not the point of writing. The actual writing is what it’s all about — the daily joy in sitting down to a blank page and crafting something beautiful or funny or heartwrenching or even just blah (depending on the day).While getting a book (and articles, and stories) published is a great ego boost, the real meaning in writing comes from the words flowing out of your fingertips — and the sense of achievement in a finished project.” ~ Bridget McNulty
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ The Power of Story
“I’d tell myself that what grabs readers isn’t beautiful writing, a rip-roaring plot, or surface drama; what grabs readers is what gives those things their meaning and power: the story itself.” ~ Lisa Cron
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Writer’s Writing Goal
“What a writer has to do is write what hasn’t been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.”
~ Ernest Hemingway
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Don’t Worry about What You’re Writing
““Writing is like being in love. You never get better at it or learn more about it. The day you think you do is the day you lose it. Robert Frost called his work a lover’s quarrel with the world. It’s ongoing. It has neither a beginning nor an end. You don’t have to worry about learning things. The fire of one’s art burns all the impurities from the vessel that contains it.” ~ James Lee Burke
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Discouraged? Don’t Quit
“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.” ~ Andre Dubus
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ On the Struggle to Beginning a Novel
“Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It’s discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.”
~ Barbara Kingsolver
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Two Questions that Guide Novels
“Two questions form the foundation of all novels: ‘What if?’ and ‘What next?’ (A third question, ‘What now?’, is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it’s more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if ‘X’ happened? That’s how you start.” ~ Tom Clancy
