writing-advice

The highest duty of the writer is to remain true to himself and let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth the artist best serves his nation.

Your first written sentence is the foundation of all of your dreams.

When we sit down to write, we psychically enter a sanctuary. This safe haven is our own personal space where we can say whatever is on our mind, where we can talk about what matters most to us, where we can imagine the kind of world that we would like to live.

Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn__ build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby.

The muse is fickle; ergo, when she knocks, ANSWER! It may take a while, but trust me, she WILL knock. In the meantime, keep your ear pressed firmly to the door.

..here's the editor's prescription, writer: 1000 words daily until next checkup.

Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.

Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book.

When I reach for my pen, nothing is out of reach.

My ideas are a shapeless mass that my writing molds into beauty.

Work on your craft, whatever your medium. Determination is your illusion headway toward reality.

If you do not want to be forgotten as soon as you are dead...be read, or try coming back and pull the feet of those who are still alive instead!

The secret to good writing is to use small words for big ideas, not to use big words for small ideas.

There is no such thing as an 'unemployed writer', only an unemployed mind

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.

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit - a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit - a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.

...being "rather unique" is no more possible than being rather pregnant.