Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.

~ Red Haircrow

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What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

~ Charles Bukowski

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Some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth.

~ Stephen King

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No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.

~ Erin Bow

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I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself When did they live? I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations.

~ C. Joybell C.

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If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

~ Dorothy Parker

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We write, edit, and rewrite the story of our own life employing descriptive words, metaphors, and symbols. Our lives are full of symbols including those supplied by nature and religion, which touch upon the mystical and spiritual aspects of life. Symbols inspire enduring hope by formulating idealist expectations.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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Heavy as such things areAfter the wordslide, the writing begins.From Word Quake

~ Eileen Granfors

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We can’t choose our poetic fathers any more than our biological ones — but we can choose how to come to terms with them.

~ Rodger Kamenetz

Rodger Kamenetz Poetry Writing Process

The Throes of Poetry - Hymns formed from groans of acquaintance, its rhythm weaving between tranquility, compassions, and peril - like bare feet stomping on broken glass - bleeds, recoils, then steps again.

~ Traci Lea Larussa

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Writing poetry is supernatural. Or, it should be.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

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I hate writing, I love having written.

~ Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker Writing Writing Process

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.

~ George R.r. Martin

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The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

~ Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett Writing Writing Process

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

~ Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler Writing Writing Process

Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn't return my phone calls; the itch I'm unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn't something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It's just something I do because not writing, as I've found, is so much worse.

~ Quentin R. Bufogle

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It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.

~ Lois Mcmaster Bujold

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You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

~ Jodi Picoult

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Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I begin a new story. My characters are aspects of my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them.

~ Red Haircrow

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Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.

~ Amy Joy

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I'm not a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer. I just have a vivid imagination and type 90 WPM.

~ Tiffany Madison

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Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.

~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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10 Steps to Becoming a Better WriterWrite.Write more.Write even more.Write even more than that.Write when you don’t want to.Write when you do.Write when you have something to say.Write when you don’t.Write every day.Keep writing.

~ Brian Clark

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Copies have been dethroned; the economic model built on them is collapsing. In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies are no longer the basis of wealth. Now relationships, links, connections, and sharing are. Value has shifted away from a copy toward the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize, edit, authenticate, display, mark, transfer, and engage a work. Art is a conversation, not a patent office. The citation of sources belongs to the realms of journalism and scholarship, not art. Reality can’t be copyrighted.

~ David Shields

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If writing didn't require thinking then we'd all be doing it.

~ Jeremiah Laabs

Jeremiah Laabs Writing Writing Process

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

~ Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal Writing Writing Process

Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn't necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of heart, the first sentence, however tentative and awkward, can lead to a desire to go just a little further.

~ Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron Writing Writing Process

Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.

~ Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron Writing Writing Process

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

~ Mickey Spillane

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At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not.]

~ William Faulkner

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There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo.

~ Alan Watt

Alan Watt Writing Writing Advice Writing From The Heart Writing Process

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.

~ Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal Writing Writing Process

I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling ... I wrote every day, at home, in the office, whether I felt like it or not, I just did it.

~ Stephen J. Cannell

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In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.

~ Samuel R. Delany

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Have you ever pondered the miracle of popcorn? It starts out as a tiny, little, compact kernel with magic trapped inside that when agitated, bursts to create something marvelously desirable. It’s sort of like those tiny, little thoughts trapped inside an author’s head that―in an excited explosion of words―suddenly become a captivating fairytale!

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

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Don’t start right off writing the ‘Great American Novel’, that's too much pressure and you'll get disappointed; start with porn, it’s fun and a good way to get your feet wet.

~ Scavola

Scavola Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Process

Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together.

~ Darlene Craviotto

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There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer...

~ William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs Writing Writing Process

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened.

~ Annie Dillard

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I’m a husband, a father of two, a full-time teacher, and so my writing process mostly involves sitting down and writing, any chance I get, anywhere I am, for as long as life will let me. Music helps. Good light helps. I love quiet and coffee when I can get them. But I can write on a bus, in a dentist office’s waiting room, in bed with a clip-on booklight, almost anywhere. And I try to do at least some every single day.

~ Glen Hirshberg

Glen Hirshberg Writing Writing Life Writing Process
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