Friday, March 12, 2010

Writerly Wisdom




Do you have a favorite writing quote?

I've got gobs, but here are a few of my favorites:

"A writer must have all the confidence in the world when writing the first draft and none whatsoever when editing subsequent drafts." T. Davis Bunn

"Writing is easy. You just stare at the paper until blood drips from your forehead." Gene Fowler

"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." Sylvia Plath (This one is currently stuck in the frame that holds my 2010 goals.)

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." Jack London

"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning." Peter De Vries

"When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip." Elmore Leonard

Oh! One more . . .

"Success is going from one failure to the next without losing enthusiasm." Winston Churchill



CR: Blood Game by Iris Johansen.

It's all better with friends.

6 comments:

  1. Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of the moon on broken glass. ~ Anton Chekhov

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  2. Writing a novel is like driving a car at night with the headlights on. You can only see a short way ahead, but you can make the whole trip like that. (I think this is John Cheever, but am no longer sure.)

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  3. Yeah, another good one, Neil. Guess you're not a pantster, eh?

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  4. “That was the moment I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of the professional which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you are writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.” Agatha Christie from her Autobiography

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  5. I should have this one on my desk too. Ugh. Make it part of my daily process.

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