#writ

A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seedword is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but and if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb. Good poems, therefore, are always close to banality, over which, however, they tower like precipices. ↗

— Alasdair Gray

#writing #romantic

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all. ↗

— Samuel R. Delany

#story #writing #writing-process #science

Some build their castles 'mid thunderbolts and fireworks. My worlds take shape in silence. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#castles #creativity #richelle #richelle-goodrich #worlds

Chameleonesque, hobbitish, unicorned, and unwakeable may not be real words, but you do know what they mean. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#pretend #richelle #richelle-goodrich #words #writing

To most, being locked away in solitary with nothing but pen and paper would prove a hard punishment. What a strange creature who views this as heaven. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#richelle #richelle-goodrich #writers #writing #richelle-goodrich

I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English department, the prof would have looked at my short stories, congratulated me on my talent, and then showed me how Joyce or Hemingway handled the same elements of the short story. The prof would have placed me in competition with the greatest writers of all time, and that would have ended my writing career. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#short-story

What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written. ↗

— Jacques Derrida

#irony #language #speech #truth #writing

Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect. ↗

— Kim Edwards

#writing-craft #writing-craft

And people turn to internet with the hope that in this virtual world, where real identity need not be disclosed, they will find someone before whom they could be their true self,without any pretensions and get an opportunity to release the pent-up emotions and feel light. ↗

— Chitralekha Paul

#internet #self #writers #writing #internet

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#internet