voice

Here’s what I learned: First thing in the morning, before I have drowned myself in coffee, while I still have that sleepy brain I used to believe was useless — that is the best brain for creative writing. Words come pouring out easily while my head still feels as if it is full of ground fog, wrapped in flannel and gauze, and surrounded by a hive of humming, velvety sleep bees. ~ Merrill Markoe

Metaphors are not user-friendly. They’re difficult to find and difficult to use well. Unfortunately, metaphors are a mainstay of good lyric writing-indeed of most creative writing. …metaphors support lyrics like bones. ~ Pat Pattison

“Rule number one of creative writing is you have to have conflict. But if you write about yourself mostly, then if you don’t have conflict, then you create it.”

~ John Fulbright

To share our stories is not only a worthwhile endeavor for the storyteller, but for those who hear our stories and feel less alone because of it. ~ Joyce Maynard

There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.

~ Robert Graves

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. ~ Virginia Woolf

“The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That’s how we learn.” Nikki Giovanni

“Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

One day a long time from now you’ll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That’s when you’ll finally produce the work you’re capable of. ~ J. D. Salinger

It’s better to write about things you feel than about things you know about. 

~ L. P. Hartly