#writing

Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come. ↗

— Gilles Deleuze

#organized-chaos #power-of-words #writing #chaos

A book is a suicide postponed. ↗

— Emil Cioran

#writing #suicide

A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love. ↗

— Honoré de Balzac

#love #romance #writing #faith

Kim olursak olalım, dünyanın hangi yerinde yaşarsak yaşayalım, ta derinlerde bir yerde hepimiz bir eksiklik duygusu taşımaktayız. Sanki temel bir şeyimizi kaybetmişiz de geri alamamaktan korkuyoruz. Neyin eksik olduğunu bilenimizde hakikaten çok az. ↗

— Elif Shafak

#imagination #life #philosophy #truth #writing

The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one--or both. Usually both. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#guilt

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#monsters

it's been my experience that most writers don't talk about their craft--they just do it ↗

— Alfred Lansing

#writing-advice #writing-humor #writing-life #experience

I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another. My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, the handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective that research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page by the scholarly work of art historians. When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery. I am completely inspired by the pursuit of knowledge through various references. I read newpapers voraciously. I love what newspapers say about contemporary culture. And then you go back to your own perceptions, your own words, and weigh them against all you have brought together. I am interested in the kaleidoscope of ideas, how you bring many strands of thought into a book and weave them together as one piece of coherent fabric, while at the same time trying to create beautiful language in the service of the story. This is the blood work of the writer. Writing is also about a life engaged. And so, for me, community work, working in the schools or with grassroots conservation organizations is another critical component of my life as a writer. I cannot separate the writing life from a spiritual life, from a life as a teacher or activist or my life intertwined with family and the responsibilities we carry within our own homes. Writing is daring to feel what nurtures and breaks our hearts. Bearing witness is its own form of advocacy. It is a dance with pain and beauty. ↗

— Terry Tempest Williams

#art

Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must Write Rule Two: Finish What Your Start Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#marketing

A smart person is not one that knows the answers, but one who knows where to find them... ↗

— William Petersen

#adventure-stories #fiction #fiction-writing #thrillers #unicorns