You Write What You Write

All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself—though, thank God I had never committed them to paper—I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.

JAMAICA KINCAID

Be Cold

When you describe the miserable and unfortunate, and want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder–that seems to give a kind of background to another’s grief, against which it stands out more clearly. Whereas in your story the characters cry and you sigh. Yes, be more cold. The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make.

ANTON CHEKHOV

A Real Writer is Always Shifting and Changing

Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success.

JAMES BALDWIN

Articulate from the Specific

Every writer must articulate from the specific. They must reach down where they stand, because there is nothing else from which to draw.

GLORIA NAYLOR

There Is No Royal Path to Good Writing

There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as do exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft.

JESSAMYN WEST

All Good Books Are Alike

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened, and after you are finished reading one, you will feel that it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Writing Can Be A Pretty Desperate Endeavor

Writing can be a pretty desperate endeavor, because it is about some of our deepest needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense of our lives, to wake up and grow and belong. It is no wonder if we sometimes tend to take ourselves perhaps a bit too seriously.

ANNE LAMOTT

Writing is Linear and Sequential

Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn’t the writing; it’s the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?”

WILLIAM ZINSSER

Writing is the Hardest Work in the World

Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven’t been told a million times already—that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.

HARLAN ELLISON

We Have to Accept Ourselves in Order to Write

We have to accept ourselves in order to write. Now none of us does that fully: few of us do it even halfway. Don’t wait for one hundred percent acceptance of yourself before you write, or even eight percent acceptance. Just write. The process of writing is an activity that teaches us about acceptance.

NATALIE GOLDBERG