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You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.
Cheryl StrayedWe also write to heighten our own awareness of life... We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection... We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it...to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely... When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking... I feel I lose my fire and my color.
Anais NinTo me, writing is about how we see. The writers I want to read teach me how to see-see the world differently. In my writing there is no separation between how I observe the world and how I write the world. We write through our eyes. We write through our body. We write out of what we know.
Terry Tempest WilliamsWell, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.
Bob MarleyWrite what you want to read. So many people think they need to write a particular kind of book, or imitate a successful style, in order to be published. I've known people who felt they had to model their book on existing blockbusters, or write in a genre that's supposed to be "hot right now" in order to get agents and publishers interested. But if you're writing in a genre you don't like, or modeling yourself on a book you don't respect, it'll show through. You're your first, most important reader, so write the book that reader really wants to read.
Cassandra ClareI write pretty fast, probably faster than most people. But I might think about something for six hours, then write it in 20 minutes. So did I write for six hours and 20 minutes, or just 20 minutes? I used to write absolutely every day, except for days when I had to travel or something.
Chuck KlostermanI don't write jokes first. I write down topics. I think of what I want to talk about, and then I write the jokes - they don't write me... And even if you don't think it's funny, you won't think it's boring. You might disagree, but you'll listen. And maybe even laugh as you disagree.
Chris RockI used to love to write. As a child I used to write all the time. I loved to write up until the second I got my first professional writing job. It turns out it's not that I hate to write. I hate, simply, to work.
Fran LebowitzWrite like you write, like you can't help but write, and your voice will become yours and yours alone. It'll take time but it'll happen as long as you let it. Own your voice, for your voice is your own. Once you know where your voice lives, you no longer have to worry so much about being derivative.
Chuck WendigTo write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [...] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [...] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful--
John GardnerThe best training is to read and write, no matter what. Don't live with a lover or roommate who doesn't respect your work. Don't lie, buy time, borrow to buy time. Write what will stop your breath if you don't write.
Grace PaleyI like to write about things that are extreme in some form. I like to write about something I feel I have to write about.
Suzanne VegaWrite a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.
Jerry PournelleIf you really want to write, then shut yourself in a room, close the door, and WRITE. If you don't want to write, do something else. It's as simple as that.
Mary GardenYou don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.
Joanne HarrisThe one concession I've made as I've gotten older is that my children are now adults and they're in their twenties and thirties and so I'm careful about how I write about them. I may write about them as a child, but I'm not going to write about their current struggles because they're adults and they can do it for themselves. I want to give them some space in a way I didn't when they were younger.
Mary Jo SalterI set myself a rule before I actually write a tune to the lyrics, and the rule is that I've got to take the lyrics on to a level of understanding before I can actually write music to them. What I'm doing is interpretation. If I don't write the lyrics, therefore I must interpret them to the best of my ability. So my rule is that I must understand it, but I don't necessarily have to accept.
James Dean BradfieldIf I have to write on an airplane or get up early to write or write late, you just gotta sit down. When you have the time, you have to be able to do it.
Noah HawleyThink of a book special to you, and how much bleaker and poorer your life would be if that one writer had not existed - if that one writer had not, a hundred times or a thousand, made the choice to write. You're going to be that one writer one day for somebody you may never meet. Nobody can write that book you're going to write - that book that will light up and change up a life - but you.
Sarah Rees BrennanThe writing is done on the computer, and the drawing is done by hand. I write, write, write, then I hit the illustration.
Stephan PastisI have a notebook that I take with me everywhere. I free-write in it when there are situations that I know I can write a song about. I will just start writing everything that I can think of while trying to write some things that are kind of poetic or sound like they could be in a song. Then, after the music is written, I go back and look at my subjects to see which one I think woud go with what music. Then, I formulate it into a melody and get the song.
Agent MThe most important thing for a writer to do is to write. It really doesn't matter what you write as long as you are able to write fluidly, very quickly, very effortlessly. It needs to become not second nature but really first nature to you. And read; you need to read and you need to read excellent books and then some bad books. Not as many bad books, but some bad books, so that you can see what both look like and why both are what they are.
Augusten BurroughsTo a great extent, I still write for myself, write what amuses me. Fortunately, I have a quirky sort of strange sense of humor that appeals to other people and that's good. I still sort of write for myself though there are some areas of the book I feel I have to put in and I feel I have to deliver.
Jasper FfordeMost critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.
Karl KrausOne of the things about the arts that is so important is that in the arts you discover the only way to learn how to do it is by doing it. You can't write by reading a book about it. The only way to learn how to write a book is to sit down and try to write a book
David McCulloughEveryone tells you to write what you know. Itโs the tried-and-true advice every writer hears at some point in her career. But to take my writing to a deeper level, Iโve found that a better practice is to simply write what frightens you, haunts you, even. I now keep a sign on the bulletin board in my office that reads: 'Write What Scares You.' Iโve learned that tapping into the hard stuff โ whether itโs the fear of loss or a boogeyman lurking in childhood memories โ is what ultimately gives a story the power to leap off the page and grab you by the collar.
Sarah JioWhen I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.
Gregory MaguireI wrote lots of scripts that never got made and they were terrible. I thought they were good at the time. You can't write two scripts and expect your career to take off. Keep writing. Be you. Be original. A lot of people go for a genre, which is fine if you can do that really well, but we all have such layered histories. We all come from a unique background. Write about your past, write about you. Or make stuff up, but make it about something that really matters.
Nicole Holofcener'Write what you know' works, but it's limiting. Write what fascinates you. Write what you can't stop thinking about.
Brian KoppelmanI write all the time, I've got a big, thick, old ledger book that I write stuff down in. I used to watch TV and write things that people would say and now I tend to get it more out of books and from conversations with people I meet.
ThighpaulsandraWrite, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.
Jane YolenAs a historian I understand how histories are written. My enemies will write histories that dismiss me and prove I was unimportant. My friends will write histories that glorify me and prove I was more important than I was. And two generations or three from now, some serious sober historian will write a history that sort of implies I was whoever I was.
Newt GingrichI think when you write, you should call it a "writing spree." I don't write every day, and I don't write regularly.
Etgar KeretThoughts are created in the act of writing. [It is a myth that] you must have something to say in order to write. Reality: You often need to write in order to have anything to say. Thought comes with writing, and writing may never come if it is postponed until we are satisfied that we have something to say...The assertion of write first, see what you had to say later applies to all manifestations of written language, to letters...as well as to diaries and journals
Frank SmithThe secret is to write just anything, to dare to write just anything, because when you write just anything, you begin to say what is important.
Julien GreenThe more I think about our species the more I think we just do stuff and make up explanations later when asked. But it's not true that I would rather write than read. I would rather read than write. To be honest I would rather hang upside down in a bucket than write.
Douglas AdamsI don't want to change the way I write my songs, I like the way I write my songs, so I keep 'em the same. I'd like to write more country songs, but other than that, I'm pretty good where I am.
Exene CervenkaI am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.
Aleksandar HemonThere is poetry in fiction. If you cannot see it and feel it when you write, you need to step back and examine what you are doing wrong. If you have not figured out how to write a simple declarative sentence and make it sing with that poetry, you are not yet ready to write an entire book.
Terry BrooksI think I'm succinct to the point of trying to write the two-word novel. Editing my work almost never means taking anything out but rather adding, because I'm always stripping down. I tend to under-write rather than over-write.
Kate DiCamilloThis is the Unix philosophy. Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs that handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.
Douglas McIlroyWhen you write songs you're commenting on love, you're commenting on sex, relationships, whatever it is that you decide to write about it. And I've wanted to write about politics or spiritual ideas for years.
Joan JettI believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.
Ann PatchettI don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay. But when I found the right story, I saw it as an opportunity to write about being a teenager and being gay. Most people, whether you're gay or straight or whatever, have experienced that relationship where one person is much more interested than the other.
John Boyne