“My task which I am trying to achieve is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel–it is, before all, to make you see. That–and no more, and it is everything.” – Joseph Conrad Sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And maybe it is. The delicate, thoughtful arrangement … Continue reading »
“What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?” –E.M. Forster Imagine if inspiration blew into your consciousness like a welcome gust on a windy day. Imagine that inspiration swirling and twirling and whipping itself into a frenzy of ideas — … Continue reading »
“The earth laughs in flowers.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson When it comes to writing a scene, one of the most important things a writer can do is to bring that moment to life for the reader. It can be very tempting to pull out a thesaurus and scatter our pages with as many incredible, amazing, super-descriptive … Continue reading »
“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.” — Ray Bradbury Many writers will admit to stacks of unread stories sitting dormant in a desk drawer — stories that will never see the light of day. There was a time I mourned for those unloved pieces. The idea that no soul … Continue reading »
“I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to … Continue reading »
Ernest Hemingway shared his own strategy for avoiding dead ends in his writing in this excerpt from a 1935 “Esquire” article: “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will … Continue reading »
I have dawdled away a good part of my free time now carving vaguely on a scrap of mahogany, but I guess I have been thinking too. Who knows. I sit here in a kind of a stupor and call it thought. –John Steinbeck, The Art of Fiction No. 45 Even the greatest, most famous … Continue reading »
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” –W. Somerset Maugham Ah, so this is why so many of us struggle in writing our novels. Follow @EducatedWriter. It turns out there are no set rules. We make them up as a trudge along. Or we toss them … Continue reading »
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. –F. Scott Fitzgerald What little bit of wisdom can be fished out of this gem from Fitzgerald, one of the great writers of the 20th century? For some of us, swimming under water and holding your breath take a considerable amount of courage. Read: … Continue reading »
“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” –Mark Twain Writers are often reminded that in order to write well, we must be diligent readers as well. However, this observation by one of America’s most venerated authors offers an important distinction here that writers can … Continue reading »