#writing

The artist works by locating the world in himself ↗

— Gertrude Stein

#process #writing #art

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts. ↗

— Steven Pressfield

#creativity #envy #writing #art

Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last. ↗

— Ralph Keyes

#courage #creativity #fear #risks #writers

Write what you know. ↗

— Mark Twain

#adventure

Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out!" he exclaimed. "The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprose. ↗

— Eugen Herrigel

#porup #writing #zen #art

Snow floated down every once in a while, but it was frail snow, like a memory fading into the distance. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#literature-writing #philosophy #art

I am really Chloe Anthony Wofford. That's who I am. I have been writing under this other person's name. I write some things now as Chloe Wofford, private things. I regret having called myself Toni Morrison when I published my first novel, The Bluest Eye. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#writing #art

I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is--a politician. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#politics #writing #art

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice. ↗

— Cyril Connolly

#reading #writing #art

All writers struggle at some point with the problem of balance between authority and involvement, seduction and revelation. Specifically, beginning writers wonder how much description to employ, and more advanced writers ask how much plot is too much or too little. And there is no better place to find answers than in the Victoria's Secret catalogue--or in any ad for lingerie--where the arts of seduction and revelation are so successfully practiced. After all, the secret of the effective lingerie ad is the secret of effective storytelling--to provide, moment by moment, the illusion of imminent expose, to give the viewer (read: reader) the uncanny sense that something fundamentally compelling is always just about to be revealed. Lingerie ads and storytelling balance the veiled and the unveiled, the seen and the unseen, the shown and the about-to-be-shown. In short, it is the art of the tease, the craft of selective 'coverage,' that, not just in lingerie but in storytelling, works to enthrall. ↗

— Julie Checkoway

#fiction-writing #novel-writing #on-fiction #art