Rules are meant to be broken. Buck the trend of character and plot dominance. Bend language, challenge structure, change points of view, turn narrative on its head: create and be original.
Category Quotes
Keep pushing. Keep creating. Keep on.
Good writing is authentic writing
Don’t waste your life. Write. Now.
I found these lines from a poem in a piece written by Cloud Atlas author, David Mitchell, for The Atlantic called ‘How to Write: “Neglect Everything Else”.’ It’s too true, but how often do we forget?
Do you write daily?
Never give up
Imagination and will
Create your own writing destiny
Wise words from a man who, against all odds, shaped destiny. Fight for your writing.
Writing failure & success. Focus instead on writing that really good book.
Feeling like you need a boost, to share in other writers’ failures unhappiness even when they’ve achieved so-called success? I really like what Anne Enright has to say:
‘ You must recognise that failure is 90% emotion, 10% self-fulfilling reality, and the fact that we are haunted by it is neither here nor there. The zen of it is that success and failure are both an illusion, that these illusions will keep you from the desk, they will spoil your talent; they will eat away at your life and your sleep and the way you speak to the people you love.’
Remember, just keep writing a really good book. The best you can. Make that your definition of success.
Here’s the rest of the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/22/falling-short-writers-reflect-failure
One writer’s rules. What are yours?
Some of mine off the top of my head include:
- Write even when you don’t feel like it. Often you can turn that around
- Write regularly
- Trust YOUR writing process, no one else’s
- Sometimes down time is writing too e.g. problem solving, fermenting characters, problem solving
- Writer’s block means something is wrong. Listen, learn and overcome
- Constantly challenge yourself to improve
- Get feedback for your work from supportive people, experts perhaps or a writers’ group
- Read, read, read good writers inside and outside your genre as well as writing books. INVALUABLE!
- Write for you, not for anyone else or fame or money and so on
- That said, your drafts should move from writing to get things out of your system out to considering your reader
- Enjoy writing. Again, if you’re not, look for what’s going wrong and change that.
writing nore 