Never tell a story because it is true: tell it because it is a good story.
John Penland Mahaffy (via writingquotes)
More you might like
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
Just a reminder that if you’re wondering what the world is coming to (aren’t we all?), Cicero already complained about it over 2000 years ago.
I found an old notebook the other day. And when I say old, I really mean it: this is a notebook I used when I was in my teens. I wrote down short poems I had written, and quotes I liked from books and songs and movies. Kind of like a Facebook page or Tumblr blog these days I guess, except all done in pen and pencil and tucked away between the covers.
Writing & listening – style, flow & rhythm
Writing is a kind of way of speaking, and I hear it and I think a lot of readers hear it, too. And so the sounds of the language and the rhythm and the cadence of the sentences are very powerful.
– Ursula K. Le Guin, in an interview with NPR
Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words.
– Virginia Woolf
There are a lot of writing tips out there, and I try to keep many of them in my head when I’m working. Things likeGeorge Orwell’s tips for writers, for example, or Stephen King’s 20 rules for writers. But one of the most fundamental and important writing tips for me, is to pay attention to what my writing sounds like.
I read my work – out loud, or whispering, or mumbling – all the time, but especially when I’m doing serious editing, or serious re-writes. It’s a great way to spot all sorts of grammatical and spelling errors, and it’s also the best way to edit and fix the way you’ve shaped your sentences, your paragraphs, your language, and your dialogue. If it doesn’t flow, if it doesn’t have that rhythm that both Le Guin and Woolf mention, then it must be changed.
Writing is a kind of way of speaking, and I hear it and I think a lot of readers hear it, too. And so the sounds of the language and the rhythm and the cadence of the sentences are very powerful.
– Ursula K. Le Guin, in an interview with NPR
Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words.
– Virginia Woolf
There are a lot of writing tips out there, and I try to keep many of them in my head when I’m working. Things likeGeorge Orwell’s tips for writers, for example, or Stephen King’s 20 rules for writers. But one of the most fundamental and important writing tips for me, is to pay attention to what my writing sounds like.
I read my work – out loud, or whispering, or mumbling – all the time, but especially when I’m doing serious editing, or serious re-writes. It’s a great way to spot all sorts of grammatical and spelling errors, and it’s also the best way to edit and fix the way you’ve shaped your sentences, your paragraphs, your language, and your dialogue. If it doesn’t flow, if it doesn’t have that rhythm that both Le Guin and Woolf mention, then it must be changed.
SICHA: In the book you return to this idea of writing for art’s sake, which is very much, I feel, out of vogue. We’ve gotten accustomed to talking about money and the commerce of writing and how you should be treated as a writer, and it’s sort of hysterical when you sit back and think about it.
LE GUIN: And there are so many guidebooks to that kind of writing: “How to be a success,” in other words. But I certainly didn’t feel like I had anything to add there, since the way I came into writing was a pretty sure way to not be a success.
SICHA: A few people may talk about the “craft of writing,” but they sound phony. The way you put it is very realistic: that this is an important thing to do if you care about writing.
LE GUIN: The word craft these days has this sort of funny, twee sound, like some little artisan putting the yeast in his handcrafted bread. Craft is how you do something well—anything. You can do anything with craft or with skill, or without it. Writing an English sentence takes a good deal of craft and skill. Writing a good English sentence takes a lot more of it.
Real writing doesn’t depend on coming up with a brilliant idea, brilliantly formulated on the first try. Real writing isn’t about getting everything right in the first draft. Real writing is sticking with your story (or your poem, or whatever else it is) through thick and thin, through rewrites and editing and despair and endless cups of tea and coffee and walks to clear your mind, through agony and joy, until you have something you are ready to release into the world.
To quote Louis Brandeis: “There is no great writing, only great rewriting.” Words to live by and remember.
SICHA: In the book you return to this idea of writing for art’s sake, which is very much, I feel, out of vogue. We’ve gotten accustomed to talking about money and the commerce of writing and how you should be treated as a writer, and it’s sort of hysterical when you sit back and think about it.
LE GUIN: And there are so many guidebooks to that kind of writing: “How to be a success,” in other words. But I certainly didn’t feel like I had anything to add there, since the way I came into writing was a pretty sure way to not be a success.
SICHA: A few people may talk about the “craft of writing,” but they sound phony. The way you put it is very realistic: that this is an important thing to do if you care about writing.
LE GUIN: The word craft these days has this sort of funny, twee sound, like some little artisan putting the yeast in his handcrafted bread. Craft is how you do something well—anything. You can do anything with craft or with skill, or without it. Writing an English sentence takes a good deal of craft and skill. Writing a goodEnglish sentence takes a lot more of it.
What this book reinforces for me, is that great works of art don’t usually just fall into your lap (or onto the page). It takes work and effort to create something good. Real writing doesn’t depend on coming up with a brilliant idea, brilliantly formulated on the first try. Real writing isn’t about getting everything right in the first draft. Real writing is sticking with your story (or your poem, or whatever else it is) through thick and thin, through rewrites and editing and despair and endless cups of tea and coffee and walks to clear your mind, through agony and joy, until you have something you are ready to release into the world.
(via Rewriting & editing is not just for losers: it’s for T.S. Eliot and other writers, too)
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”
“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
