LIAM CLANCY says (to Bob Dylan):
Remember Bob, no fear, no envy, no meanness.
NEIL GAIMAN says:
“The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it’s about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising (“but of course that’s why he was doing that, and that means that…”) and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.”
“It’s best make art and not to worry. I’ll take the satisfaction of having built something that did what I hoped it would do over being in love with my own voice any day. It’s safer. Make good art that says sort of what you set out to say and then, when it’s good enough for jazz, go on to the next thing.”
“How do you do it? You grit your teeth, and you do it. Some days it’s about as romantic and magical as ditch-digging, but you carry on, because that’s how you make it happen.”
“No real worlds of wisdom, though. Write something you’d want to read. Make your daily word count, if you can, but the world won’t end if you don’t. Surprise yourself. Make magic. Remember that none of the rules you’ve been told apply when it’s just you and a blank sheet of paper. And when you’re creating characters, write people you would want to spend time with — even the nasty ones.”
AUDREY VERNICK says:
It could happen tomorrow and it could happen with the next book or the last book, and you won’t know until you know, I know (AH!) but all you can do is put your chin down and head straight into it. Or really decide not to. Assume this period of it not happening will break or stop or whatever. Assume you’ll make the leap, that someone will discover you and perhaps then pick up all the books you’ve written and beg you for the ones you’ve only thought about. But you don’t know when that’ll be. So head into it, keep it going, send stuff out, keep writing, and when it happens, it’ll happen.
Right?
Me and Audrey:
Her: We all really need a sale to want to write again, stupid.
Me: I didn’t used to.
Her: But then you reach a point. I sent out to literary magazines for years and years before an acceptance. Many, many, many years. And that acceptance was from some cruddy place that no one ever heard of, and paid in copies. It adds up, all that waiting without validation, and writers reach a point at which they wonder if it’s worth it. It’s part of it. And right now for you, a big part of it.
::coughs:: Ahem. DOT CRANE says:
“I kept trying to write, but instead would feverishly surf the internet, or pore over agent guides that I’ve already pored over dozens of times. And I was feeling so strained and time-is-out-of-joint and mad at myself. Mad for wasting my precious, tiny free time, and mad because I have all these writing ideas, cool new stuff headed down the pipeline and there I was sitting at the other end like some kind of troll, holding a big boulder against the opening.
But maybe some days it’s just too hard to keep going. Maybe you have to give yourself permission to wail and wallow those days, then the next morning, wash your face and get back to work.”
“Listen to your story. Just listen to your story. Listen as hard as you can and give it shape as best you can. Dig deep, pull out all the stops, while paying close attention to whatever idea came to you, giving off sparks.
Do NOT think about where it fits in the market. Or how it compares to your other stories. Do not wonder how crappy is it really. Or how good is it. Focus instead on what is it. And try to get that down on paper, without fussing about anything else.”
“Focus on what you love. Because what you love is the key to who you are, and who you are is what will set your work apart from every other work. It’s the unique thing you have to offer. And the only unique thing—there are no new stories under the sun.
It’s not about the story—it’s what you bring to the telling of it.
HENRI J.M. NOUWEN says:
“To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives-the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections-that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only truly grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let’s not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God.”
“Telling someone ‘I love you’ in whatever way is always delivering good news. Nobody will respond by saying, ‘Well, I knew that already, you don’t have to say it again!’ Words of love and affirmation are like bread. We need them each day, over and over. They keep us alive inside.”
“No two friends are the same. Each has his or her own gift for us. When we expect one friend to have all we need, we will always be hypercritical, never completely happy with what he or she does have.
One friend may offer us affection, another may stimulate our minds, another may strengthen our souls. The more able we are to receive the different gifts our friends have to give us, the more able we will be to offer our own unique but limited gifts. Thus, friendships create a beautiful tapestry of love.”
“There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control over its development, and to make it available in large quantities. Success brings many rewards and often fame. Fruits, however, come from weakness and vulnerability. And fruits are unique. A child is the fruit conceived in vulnerability, community is the fruit born through shared brokenness, and intimacy is the fruit that grows through touching one another’s wounds. Let’s remind one another that what brings us true joy is not successfulness but fruitfulness.”
JANE ESPENSON says:
“We all know that the very best episodes of The Office are more than simply piles of jokes. Remember, in the episode that Joss directed, when we were expecting Jim to show up at Pam’s art show, but it was Michael instead and he loved her art? Remember the “Booze Cruise” episode where Jim confessed his feelings for Pam to Michael? Those moments of connection, of vulnerability, of hurt, of unexpected nobility… those are the reasons to even sit down and try to tackle a spec “The Office.” If you’re not driving toward a moment like that, you need to start over.”
G.K. CHESTERTON says:
“Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice, It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one’s self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally, but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity. Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”
ROBERT OLEN BUTLER says:
“If somebody rejects the story, with whatever criticism–you’re going to to get bad criticism . . . you let it GO. What is the editorial reader’s frame of mind? They have fifty things on their desk today, and there are going to be fifty tomorrow and the next day, and the next. Do you think this puts them in a frame of mind where they are naked to each manuscript they open? Where they put aside the worldview they’ve held all their lives and open up to a new voice, a new vision of the world? Rarely. That’s why a lot of bad stuff gets perpetuated, the bland stuff and the mediocre stuff. It’s because often those screening readers .. . just by the very nature of what they do, are going to be if not consciously looking for, at least more open to, things familiar to them. So all of this works against the unique voice of the real artist.”
JANE YOLEN says:
“Writing novels is always a sail between the Scylla of high art and the Charybdis of pure storytelling. Our fragile (c)raft has to pull us through. And we have to make it look effortless as we row.”
“Anthony Burgess once said that dream seldom survives the first paragraph. And Edith Wharton, quoting an old French proverb, wrote ‘I dream of an eagle, I give birth to a hummingbird.’
All writing is about that gap–no that chasm–between expectation and final product.”
JOSS WHEDON says:
“The challenge is structural: keeping your eye on – without repeating or contradicting – what you’ve done, creating something that seems not only coherent, but inevitable. Not only just a way to tell the story, but the way to tell the story.”
MISS SNARK says:
“Here’s the thing. You have to write the thing that fills you with passion. You have to write something you love the way you love your children: all the time, even when you want to murder them. You have to write something you love so much it doesn’t even cross your mind to ask ‘am I wasting my time’ because to NOT write it would be wasting your heart.
There isn’t a genre in the entire world that is so glutted that there isn’t room for a great addition. The key is ‘great.’ Which is why you have to love it, cause you may hear a lot of ‘no’ but if you love it, you will persevere.
