writers-on-writing

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing--and reading--is a solitary business. And it__ good to know I__ not alone.

The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, shadows of truth which they can hold as truths.

When you start searching for __ure elements_ in literature you will find that literature has been created by the following classes of persons: Inventors. Men who found a new process, or whose extant work gives us the first known example of a process. The masters. Men who combined a number of such processes, and who used them as well as or better than the inventors. The diluters. Men who came after the first two kinds of writer, and couldn__ do the job quite as well. Good writers without salient qualities. Men who are fortunate enough to be born when the literature of a given country is in good working order, or when some particular branch of writing is __ealthy_. For example, men who wrote sonnets in Dante__ time, men who wrote short lyrics in Shakespeare__ time or for several decades thereafter, or who wrote French novels and stories after Flaubert had shown them how. Writers of belles-lettres. That is, men who didn__ really invent anything, but who specialized in some particular part of writing, who couldn__ be considered as __reat men_ or as authors who were trying to give a complete presentation of life, or of their epoch. The starters of crazes.Until the reader knows the first two categories he will never be able __o see the wood for the trees_. He may know what he __ikes_. He may be a __ompleat book-lover_, with a large library of beautifully printed books, bound in the most luxurious bindings, but he will never be able to sort out what he knows to estimate the value of one book in relation to others, and he will be more confused and even less able to make up his mind about a book where a new author is __reaking with convention_ than to form an opinion about a book eighty or a hundred years old.He will never understand why a specialist is annoyed with him for trotting out a second- or third-hand opinion about the merits of his favourite bad writer.

Writers leave a trail of magic everywhere they go.

If we are artists- hell, whether or not we're artists- it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn't have existed if not for the fire, the genetic mutation, the sick baby, the accident.

It's a phenomenal experience jumping from the devious mind of a sorceress bent on conquering the world to the compassionate musing of a queen capable of healing life with a touch__ll in a flicker of thought. That's why I love writing.

I before E except after C. Weird?By rebelling against the rules the word itself denotes its very meaning: of strange or extraordinary character, odd, fantastic.I think all writers are weird.

Why does the writer write? The writer writes to serve _ hopelessly he writes in the hope that he might serve _ not himself and not others, but that great cold elemental grace which knows us.A writer I very much admire is Don DeLillo. At an awards ceremony for him at the Folger Library several years ago, I said that he was like a great shark moving hidden in our midst, beneath the din and wreck of the moment, at apocalyptic ease in the very elements of our psyche and times that are most troublesome to us, that we most fear.Why do I write? Because I wanna be a great shark too. Another shark. A different shark, in a different part of the ocean. The ocean is vast.

Writers,_ Esther said simply. __or some reason, a lot of you reject what you hear and see in your heads. If you go too long ignoring it, it builds up and then you do all sorts of weird things. Mumble to yourself. Nightmares. Daydreams. Total anarchy and chaos. Before you know it, the writer is either sitting in a corner feverishly humming to his- or herself or on Prozac.

Replace your old books with the book you've always wanted to write.

Writing is a lonely business, which if allowed publicity and socializing it might deteriorate. Supportive people understand the need of a writer to withdraw to the solitude of oneself.

Replace your old books with the books you__e always wanted to write.

By writing, we partake in something greater than ourselves. Pick up pen and paper or take a seat at your computer today and create something of beauty.

Every word I write is a seed that I may nurture into a small, beautiful poem or a tall, soaring tree.

Can we all pause a moment to appreciate the artistry of that sentence? "Sitting casually on the floor, a guard sat..." That's freaking art right there! Someone nominate this thing for the Hugo Award already!

Basically, writers write because they have something to say...Everyone has a story in them, writers merely decide to share it with the world...

Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.

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