write

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
9f49591	We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write.	readers stories write writing	Neil Gaiman
4127eb2	I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.	life write	Dodie Smith
8197a0f	In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.	light read stories write	Alberto Manguel
3f9b183	When I write, I make discoveries about my feelings.	feelings write	Gail Carson Levine
b9bb7cd	It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.	write	Dodie Smith
bcbd232	That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.	everyday-life life love movies reading thinking write	Nicole Krauss
2eeea06	It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.	write writing writing-life writing-process	Steven Pressfield
8740c29	"Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do? Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft. Then take out as many of the excesses as you can."	anne-lamott bird-by-bird first-draft first-drafts write writer writers writing writing-advice writing-life	Anne Lamott
c93318f	You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.	novelist write writer	Pat Conroy
c139396	Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.	author authors e-b-white eb-white strunk-and-white strunk-white the-elements-of-style william-strunk-jr write writer writing writing-advice	William Strunk Jr.
7b3d2a9	Like a flower pressed flat and dried, we try to hold it still and say, this is exactly how it was the day I first saw it. But like the flower, the past cannot be trapped that way. It loses its fragrance and and its vitality, its fragility becomes brittleness and its colors fade. And when next you look on the flower, you know that it is not at all what you sought to capture, that that moment has fled forever.	capture change fade fled flower history hold-on past preserve reality remember time write writing	Robin Hobb
398cc17	"I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost," while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head."	authoring authors on-writing write writer writers writing	Anne Lamott
024b0cc	"You can't write, yet you learned to hunt, to survive. How?" I paused with my foot on the threshold. "That's what happens when you're responsible for lives other than your own, isn't it? You do what you have to do." He was still sitting on the table, still straddling that inner line between the here and now and wherever he'd had to go in his mind to endure the fight with the Bogge. I met his feral and glowing stare. "You aren't what I expected--for a human."	feyre high-lord human responsible survive tamlin write	Sarah J. Maas
edae8e2	"If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat."	artistry literature poet poetic poetry pretentious pretentiousness the-writing-life write writer writing writing-advice	Annie Dillard
27d1aab	"Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, "It is the trade entering his body." The art must enter the body, too."	art artist artistry discipline literature read reader reading the-writing-life write writer writing writing-advice	Annie Dillard
8db806d	And then, unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought or image arrives. Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright, orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish. Others will step of the shadows like Boo Radley and make you catch your breath or take a step backward. They're often so rich, these unbidden thoughts, and so clear that they feel indelible. But I say write them all down anyway.	authoring book-ideas getting-an-idea idea ideas write writer writing writing-ideas	Anne Lamott
2521779	There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock.	write writer writer-problems writer-s-block writes writing	Anne Lamott
c2e4244	There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.	bird-by-bird on-writing the-writing-process write writer writing writing-advice writing-help	Anne Lamott
717dcd5	I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.	the-literary-process the-writing-life the-writing-process write writer writing	Annie Dillard
2384198	The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell.	artist write writing	Steven Pressfield
bceec9b	Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them.	author first-drafts write writer writing	Anne Lamott
43311a4	For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.	on-writing the-writing-process write writer writing writing-advice	Anne Lamott
ff93ee4	The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the one hand, originated in 'infantile pregenital erotic exuberance, polymorphously perverse,' and that conscious attention, on the other, was a 'libidinal hypercathexis' -- by which magic phrases they seemed to mean that writing and reading, or telling and listening, were literally ways of making love.	love read sex speak write	John Barth
f086ad3	I couldn't write--or wouldn't write, at any rate--unable to face the grueling self-scrutiny that fiction demands	write	Armistead Maupin

9f49591

We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write.

readers stories write writing

Neil Gaiman

4127eb2

I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.

life write

Dodie Smith

8197a0f

In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.

light read stories write

Alberto Manguel

3f9b183

When I write, I make discoveries about my feelings.

feelings write

Gail Carson Levine

b9bb7cd

It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.

write

Dodie Smith

bcbd232

That's what I do. Watch movies and read. Sometimes I even pretend to write, but I'm not fooling anyone. Oh, and I go to the mailbox.

everyday-life life love movies reading thinking write

Nicole Krauss

2eeea06

It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

write writing writing-life writing-process

Steven Pressfield

8740c29

"Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wracked or in bondage to a person or a way of life, tell your story. Risk freeing someone else. Not everyone will be glad that you did. Members of your family and other critics may wish you had kept your secrets. Oh, well, what are you going to do? Get it all down. Let it pour out of you and onto the page. Write an incredibly shitty, self-indulgent, whiny, mewling first draft. Then take out as many of the excesses as you can."

anne-lamott bird-by-bird first-draft first-drafts write writer writers writing writing-advice writing-life

Anne Lamott

c93318f

You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.

novelist write writer

Pat Conroy

c139396

Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.

author authors e-b-white eb-white strunk-and-white strunk-white the-elements-of-style william-strunk-jr write writer writing writing-advice

William Strunk Jr.

7b3d2a9

Like a flower pressed flat and dried, we try to hold it still and say, this is exactly how it was the day I first saw it. But like the flower, the past cannot be trapped that way. It loses its fragrance and and its vitality, its fragility becomes brittleness and its colors fade. And when next you look on the flower, you know that it is not at all what you sought to capture, that that moment has fled forever.

capture change fade fled flower history hold-on past preserve reality remember time write writing

Robin Hobb

398cc17

"I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost," while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head."

authoring authors on-writing write writer writers writing

Anne Lamott

024b0cc

"You can't write, yet you learned to hunt, to survive. How?" I paused with my foot on the threshold. "That's what happens when you're responsible for lives other than your own, isn't it? You do what you have to do." He was still sitting on the table, still straddling that inner line between the here and now and wherever he'd had to go in his mind to endure the fight with the Bogge. I met his feral and glowing stare. "You aren't what I expected--for a human."

feyre high-lord human responsible survive tamlin write

Sarah J. Maas

edae8e2

"If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat."

artistry literature poet poetic poetry pretentious pretentiousness the-writing-life write writer writing writing-advice

Annie Dillard

27d1aab

"Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, "It is the trade entering his body." The art must enter the body, too."

art artist artistry discipline literature read reader reading the-writing-life write writer writing writing-advice

Annie Dillard

8db806d

And then, unbidden, seemingly out of nowhere, a thought or image arrives. Some will float into your head like goldfish, lovely, bright, orange, and weightless, and you follow them like a child at an aquarium that was thought to be without fish. Others will step of the shadows like Boo Radley and make you catch your breath or take a step backward. They're often so rich, these unbidden thoughts, and so clear that they feel indelible. But I say write them all down anyway.

authoring book-ideas getting-an-idea idea ideas write writer writing writing-ideas

Anne Lamott

2521779

There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock.

write writer writer-problems writer-s-block writes writing

Anne Lamott

c2e4244

There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.

bird-by-bird on-writing the-writing-process write writer writing writing-advice writing-help

Anne Lamott

717dcd5

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.

the-literary-process the-writing-life the-writing-process write writer writing

Annie Dillard

2384198

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell.

artist write writing

Steven Pressfield

bceec9b

Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them.

author first-drafts write writer writing

Anne Lamott

43311a4

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

on-writing the-writing-process write writer writing writing-advice

Anne Lamott

ff93ee4

The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the one hand, originated in 'infantile pregenital erotic exuberance, polymorphously perverse,' and that conscious attention, on the other, was a 'libidinal hypercathexis' -- by which magic phrases they seemed to mean that writing and reading, or telling and listening, were literally ways of making love.

love read sex speak write

John Barth

f086ad3

I couldn't write--or wouldn't write, at any rate--unable to face the grueling self-scrutiny that fiction demands

write

Armistead Maupin