“I have advice for people who want to write. I don’t care whether they’re 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think […]
George Saunders’ Short Animated Documentary on the Art of Storytelling
“A good story is one that says, at many different levels, ‘we’re both human beings, we’re in this crazy situation called life, that we don’t really understand. Can we put our heads together and confer about it a little bit at a very high, non-bullshitty level?’ Then, all kinds of magic can happen.” ~ George Saunders […]
10 Brilliant Tips for Writing Fiction Inspired by Famous Authors
Discover Your Story in the Act of Writing It’s natural to want to know where your story is headed or at the very least, know that you are not wasting your time — especially on something as grand as the first draft of a novel — but it’s not always easy to relinquish control and let the act of writing itself discover your story. Yet often it is in doing […]
Henry Miller on Art, Creation & Change
Natalie Goldberg on Stepping Out Your Own Way & How Writing Frees Us
“Simply step out of the way and record your thoughts as they roll through you. Writing Practice spends the heart and mind, helps to keep us flexible so that rigid distinctions between apples and milk, tigers and celery disappear. Every minute we change. It is a great opportunity. At any point, we can step out […]
Sarah Waters on being disciplined
“Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like […]