writing-life

it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.

What doesn't kill us gives us something new to write about.

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth__ ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar.

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.

You may be a serious writer if _.10. your hard drive is littered with random notes and story ideas _ but not nearly as littered as your head.9. you keep pen and paper next to your bed. And in the glove compartment. And in your gym bag. Also on the rim of the bathtub.8. a day without Roget__ Thesaurus is a day without sunshine.7. your emotional landscape includes creativity, confidence, elation, frustration, and the occasional neurosis.6. you__e ever had to clean peanut butter and bread crumbs off your keyboard, because the work was going well, and you didn__ want to stop for lunch.5. grammar and punctuation turn you on.4. your interest in a new acquaintance is directly proportionate to his/her potential as a secondary character.3. you__e worn the white e, r, s, and t clean off your keyboard.2. the search history on your web browser would raise red flags with the FBI, CIA, DEA, and mental health professionals everywhere.1. you have stories to tell, and you just. Keep. Telling. Them.

I sometimes think if I did not write I would be a madwoman. Now I am a sane woman with a lot of mad pages.

Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.

Don't think too much. There'll be time to think later. Analysis won't help. You're chiseling now. You're passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There's something there. It isn't your business yet to know whether it's going to be prize-worthy someday, or whether it will gather dust in a drawer. Now you've carved the tree. You've chiseled the marbled. You've begun.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question.

Give all that you can. No more. No less. Every. Single. Day.

I write because that is what I am supposed to do.

Nothing is louder than silence.

I don't think writers need to be insane. Just crazy.

Most days, writing simply requires work-ethic, discipline, clarity, focus, time. Other days...it will demand absolutely everything of you.

I wear the writer pants in the family.

Life baffles me most days. Maybe that's why I write. To try and make sense of it all.

A writer writes. There are no exceptions to this reality. No excuses. Stop wasting time talking about your stories and get them on paper.

America takes her writers too seriously.