#writ

I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn’t give up. Then I wrote one more book. ↗

— Beth Revis

#debut-author #first-drafts #inspiration #persistence #publishing

I don't trust men everybody likes. Being nice isn't the same as being good. ↗

— Sarah Rees Brennan

#wisdom #writing #inspirational

If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman. ↗

— Socrates

#mental-illness #writing #writing-life #inspirational

Ronan woke up the following morning with a terrible hangover and a huge sense of regret. He had hurt the woman he loves most in the world and he knew Katie was very strong willed and didn’t forgive easily. ↗

— Annette J. Dunlea

#honey-trap #irish-writer #forgiveness

Often you cannot wait for inspiration—it needs to be sought out. ↗

— Dean F. Wilson

#writing #inspirational

You'll never be as good as the next page you write, or as bad as the last one. ↗

— D.E.M. Emrys

#inspirational #writing #inspirational

I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling. ↗

— Dorothy Allison

#understanding #writing #forgiveness

The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things. [from her Newberry Award acceptance speech] ↗

— Lois Lowry

#on-writing #freedom

If you want to change something by Tuesday, theater is no good. Journalism is what does that. But, if you want to just alter the chemistry of the moral matrix, then theater has a longer half-life. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#interview #playwriting #theater #change

They lived happily ever after. It said so. In the book. They were the last words on the page. Happily ever after. Despereaux was sure that he had read exactly those words time and time again. Lying on the floor with the drum beating and the mice shouting... Despereaux had a sudden, chilling thought: Had some other mouse eaten the words that spoke the truth? Did the knight and the fair maiden really not live happily ever after? ↗

— Kate DiCamillo

#inspirational #writing-from-the-heart #inspirational