Wednesday Wisdom for Writer and Those Who Love Them

"... everythng in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." —Sylvia Plath


After 9/11 I wrote a poem about the plane that went down in the field. For me it was cathartic. Sometimes big things require a poem.

Can you imagine what Sylvia Plath would have done with a blog?



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Wednesday Wisdom for Writers and Those Who Love Them

"Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to." —Sylvia Plath


Donald Maass reminds us that if it's not written on the page, it doesn't exist. That's important to remember when we're trying to recreate what's in our heads so that others can see what we see.

Sylvia Plath, I think, is talking about emotions. The piece between an event and a reaction. With both fiction and poetry, there are a lot of ways to get those onto the page, and right or wrong, perfectly done or not, the thing with emotions is that they're going to resonate with someone.



It's all better with friends.

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.