Writing Life Quotes - Page 13

Two things consistently bring me pleasure: hot sweet tea and writing. Which is not to say that either are particularly good for me…I use entirely too much sugar and so far don’t find sucralose to be a good alternative. Also, writing is not a practice that engenders confidence. Quite the opposite. It’s about making yourself deliberately insecure so that you can write the next thing and have it be worth reading.And that’s not even taking into consideration the business end of things, which can make you bitter if you’re not careful…But I’ve spent my the bulk of my life to date figuring out the right mix of fat and sugar in my tea and also, how to get incrementally better (I hope…) at the writing, so I’m not giving it/them up!

All of life is an amphitheater where we each serve as an appreciative member of the audience until the sublime play ends with our death. The chapters and verses in our life story reflect what we value – how appreciative we are for our time to work, play, laugh, cry, and create.

Nonfiction. I didn’t choose it as much as it chose me. It squatted and birthed me one raw winter day then jerked me up and set me to scribing.

Someone asked me, 'How do you write a book?' I said, 'I live with a pen in one hand.

Some of my greatest successes in business are simply the result of taking huge, calculated risks.

By living, thinking, even dreaming the story in one continuous process, ideas came faster and faster. Sometimes the typewriter keys would fly so fast that I wondered if my fingers could keep up with them. And at the finish of the story I often had to take a few days off as my fingertips were too sore to begin work on the next book.

How do you thank someone like Woody Allen or Milan Kundera—when they have shared ideas with you that are no less than life-saving, when they have given you some of your happiest moments, sharing what they have learned like a parent or a friend? Do you hunt them down and shake their hand? Do you ask for their autograph? Would that even the balance? And how do you thank Orson Welles or Oscar Wilde—people who are no longer with us? There is only one way to show your gratitude, and that is to give their precious gift back, return it the way you received it: write.

Behind every novel is a greater story of how it came to be published.

Writing is a beast to tame, an energy to transform. Whip that toad into a prince and French kiss it to life. We start at the top but keep looking down, from macro to micro, from what could work to what does—but start with the dream. Nothing is real apart from the clouds, and all clouds pass with life in their wake—some rain thoughts.

Writing is not a numbers game. You should focus more on reaching the hearts of readers and building fans more than publishing a plethora of books that no one may care about.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

The act of writing involves documenting and studiously examining interactions of all aspects of the self, the environment, and culture. Writing is an illustrious act of self-expression. Writing resembles a ‘coming of the age’ story because the ongoing process of defining a person’s personality and character is representative of the synergistic product of the continuous and cumulative interaction of an organic self with the world, the constant process of developing psychological, social, cognitive and ethical self.

Do what you love, especially if your sharing the word

To ask how I feel about writing is to ask how I feel about breathing.

Here's one prophecy the writer can make - you'll never be rich and you'll probably be poor.

One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.

I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you,and that you will work with these stories from your life--not someone else's life--water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work.

When you feel that creeping self-doubt, acknowledge it. Write down your feelings in your journal... and then continue with your writing.

The most lies we will ever tell in our lives will be to ourselves.

Your first draft is a petulant teenager, sure it knows best, adamant that its Mother is wrong. Your third draft has emerged from puberty, realising that its Mother was right about everything.

Writing is not a hobby. Collecting stamps or coins is a hobby. Writing is a calling.

And here you see me working out, as cheerfully and thankfully as I may, my doom of sharing in the glass a constant change of customers, and of lying down and rising up with the skeleton allotted to me for my mortal companion.

Grab a pen and your turf will have no limits.

You never know what you will write until you write it

I don't believe in writers' block. Do doctors have 'doctors block?' Do plumbers have 'plumbers' block?" No. We all have days when we don't feel like working, but why do writers turn that into something so damn special by giving it a faintly romantic name.