writers-on-writing

Write only if you wish to read it again and again...

If one can, anyone can.If two can, you can, too!

A writer who hasn't written anything worth-while is a most doubtful person.

The mist after rain, uninterrupted rainfall on rooftops, pitter-patter intellect. The thoughts I leave behind like footsteps.

The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates and lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it.

The most we can hope for when we write anything is dazzling imperfection. The least we can hope for is accolades from one or two people who don't know us. Spending all afternoon on "the right word" is probably foolish (though I've done it many times), but then again, it may not be. There may be people out there who'll read that nearly-perfect sentence (or paragraph), with its "right word," and they'll nod and smile and say to themselves, "Hey, that's not too bad.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Your sensitivity, your tenderness, your eyes make me pick up my pen and write, Mrignayni!

Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: "I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be__f there is to be a world. Write about all the things that men have written about since the beginning of writing and talking__ut write to a point. Work hard at it, care about it. Write about our people: tell their story. You have something glorious to draw on begging for attention. Don__ pass it up. Don__ pass it up. Use it. Good luck to you. The Nation needs your gifts. Lorraine Hansberry speech, __o Be Young, Gifted, and Black,_ given to Readers Digest/United Negro College Fund creative writing contest winners, NYC, May 1, 1964.

Don__ try to be different. Just be good. To be good is different enough.

It makes a great difference to the look of a novel whether its author believes that the world came late into being and continues to come by a creative act of God, or whether he believes that the world and ourselves are the product of a cosmic accident. It makes a great difference to his novel whether he believes that we are created in God's image, or whether he believes we create God in our own. It makes a great difference whether he believes that our wills are free, or bound like those of the other animals.

Your dreams don__ stop being dreams because of circumstances.

When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing does is wipe things out. Replace them.

If you're a writer, you'll know it by the distinct feeling of only being able to breathe properly when alone with your characters. All other times, I'm panting--just pining for the next time I can be with them.

Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it? Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

A writer's knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a store of energy on which he must draw for a lifetime: one volt of it properly directed will bring a character to life.

As a writer, you don't just write for the ears, you also write for the eyes.