I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.
emotions family writing-life memoir writing-from-the-heart writing-process writing-craft emotion writing-style families
.. The answer is not in the damn blank page - it's in the days or years before and you have to dredge it up - exhume the past again..
past experience memories writing-process writing-craft
A fiction writer weaves a fabric of lies in hopes of revealing deeper human truths.
writing fiction writing-process
.. Language always occurs in a context - you can speak Elizabethan words, but to speak the language you have to put on the mindset..
language writing-process writing-advice
Bastam poucas palavras para escrever uma história e apenas uma pessoa para a ler.
literature writing writing-process writing-advice
It's all mine, it's all sacred.
writing-life passion writing-process writing-advice
.. Consider yourself a functional character in someone else's novel - a background character - a person on the street - that's the perspective..
perspective writing-process writing-advice
.. When you're a writer, you become deeper and more uniquely distinct, the more you go inside yourself..
introspection writer writing-process
Raise the bar. Don't duck under it.
writing-life writing-process writing-advice
All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts... I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
writing writing-life writing-process writing-craft
I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.
writing-process writing-craft
The only 'ironclad rules' in writing fiction are the laws of physics and the principles of grammar, and even those can be bent.
writing-process writing-craft writing-advice
Don't over edit. Don't second-guess yourself, or your ideas. Just write. Write every day, and keep at it. Don't get discouraged with the rejections. Tape them up on your office wall, to remind you of all the hard work you put in when you finally start getting published! It's all about persistence and passion. And have fun with it. Don't forget to have fun.
I can't wait to get back to writing today so I can see what happens next Kim Cormack
writing writing-from-the-heart writing-process writing-craft writing-books
That's the good thing about writing. You don't need any special degree or anything to do it. You just do it.
writing inspirational writing-process writing-craft
Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly.
writing writing-process writing-craft writing-advice writing-philosophy
Writing is a struggle against silence.
writing-process
People who think that grammar is just a collection of rules and restrictions are wrong. If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links things and brings opposites together. Grammar is a wonderful way of organising the world how you'd like it to be.
Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.
Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw his book plain before him and it vanished; acted people's parts as he ate; mouthed them as he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.
Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.
In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.'I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately.
A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey, this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.
writing-process novels short-stories
For most of the process, nothing but faith, fueled by your own stubbornness, will be pulling you along. The work that you've done on the book so far won't be much comfort, because so much of it will be insufferable crap, until the very last moment, when you figure out how to fix it and everything comes together.
I write not because I want to but because I am destined to.
inspirational writing-process
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