Writing Quotes - Page 409

The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams, is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time alone. Write in a journal. Take long walks in the woods.

Writing in a journal reminds you of your goals and of your learning in life. It offers a place where you can hold a deliberate, thoughtful conversation with yourself.

Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader.

There can be a science to joke writing, there are certainly rules and patterns that can be followed, but I think most of the best comedy goes beyond the rules.

I think of the author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, 'I will tell you a story' and then he passes the hat.

The art of writing history is the art of emphasizing the significant facts at the expense of the insignificant. And it is the same in every field of knowledge. Knowledge is power only if a man knows what facts not to bother about.

One does not consider style, because style is.

Step one is to take ownership of figuring strengths ans weaknesses out. It starts with writing them down but, to take ownership, you have got to seek feedback of those who directly observe you - this is scary and uncomfortable for many people. It's no fun to hear negative feedback and most people don't want to stick their necks out to give it to you. So, you have to ask.

So such is life that it writes itself, trying to right itself, but there's nothing wrong with it.

I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

A good writer writes with a camera, not a pen.

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.

I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.

The dirty secret of art is you don't have to show people your bad writing. That's what we have the delete key for.

When you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore.

There is no screenplay-writing recipe that guarantees your cake will rise.

Don't be didactic - don't write about poverty. Write about poor people. When you dramatize their lives and let life and characters be your inspiration, you will express the 'idea' dynamically and without preaching.

If you feel like keeping a journal-that neither you nor anyone else on earth will ever want to read-be my guest. But if you want to write something that may eventually see the light of day, that a magazine might buy or a publisher publish, then you'll have to knock off the journaling and do the grunt work that real writing requires.

All I dreamed about Dr. Jekyll was that one man was being pressed into a cabinet, when he swallowed a drug and changed into another being. I awoke and said at once that I had found the missing link for which I had been looking so long, and before I went again to sleep almost every detail of the story, as it stands, was clear to me. Of course, writing it was another thing.

No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect that we hear too much of it in literature.

Every morning or afternoon, whenever you want to write, you have to go up and shoot that old bear under your desk between the eyes.

At the top of the cycle you write policies for everybody, no matter how bad, and at the bottom you cancel everybody, no matter how good. It's a manic-depressive cycle.