#writing

Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear. ↗

— Helen Dunmore

#both #conscious #ear #head #how

Given the devaluation of literature and of the study of foreign languages per se in the United States, as well as the preponderance of theory over text in graduate literature studies, creative writing programs keep literature courses populated. ↗

— Marilyn Hacker

#creative #creative writing #creative writing programs #foreign #foreign languages

Sometimes I can spend as long revising a manuscript as I spent writing it in the first place. ↗

— Margaret Haddix

#i #i can #long #manuscript #place

I'm working seven days a week in the fall. I couldn't possibly keep that up. This is only for the fall. In the last couple of years I've tended to do most of my serious writing in the winter, when there's nothing going on with football. ↗

— Gregg Easterbrook

#days #fall #football #going #i

I love the way folktale and fantasy tap into the roots of story telling. The paradox, for me, is that by moving a story into the fantastic we can actually bring it closer to the reader, not move it further away. It is more than an escape. When we read of the only daughter of a fisherman (or the third son of a woodcutter) in a fairy tale, we are all that character. That's the underlying pulse beat of such tales. Using the fantastic as a prism for the past, if done properly, removes the tale from distancing specificity. It can't just be read as unique to a time and place; it is universalized in interesting, powerful ways. When I wrote Tigana, about the way tyranny tries to erase identity in conquered peoples, the fantasy setting seems to have done exactly that: I'm asked in places ranging from Korea to Poland to Croatia to Quebec, "Were you writing about us?" I was. All of them. That is the point. The fantastic is a tool in the writer's arsenal, as potentially powerful as any there is, and any tool we have works to the benefit of the reader. (Author's Note) ↗

— Guy Gavriel Kay

#fantasy #folktale #writing #experience

Well, of course it was a very trying time for me, and fortunately I had a lot of people who were supportive. A lot of people who were writing and calling and saying they were praying for me. Some people sent me Scripture, and that helped. ↗

— Anita Hill

#course #fortunately #had #helped #i

All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland. ↗

— Jimi Hendrix

#bland #feel #i #i feel #just

It certainly made a film writing career for me. ↗

— Buck Henry

#certainly #film #made #me #writing

Men wholly bent on wordly treasures were the dupes of their own passions, rather than deceived by the writings or pretenses of those who claimed to be Alchemists. ↗

— Ethan A. Hitchcock

#bent #claimed #deceived #dupes #men

Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting. ↗

— Wietse Venema

#challenge #even #interesting #makes #more