#writing

Dear Aspiring Writer, you are not ready. Stop. Put that finished story away and start another one. In a month, go back and look at the first story. RE-EDIT it. Then send it to a person you respect in the field who will be hard on you. Pray for many many many red marks. Fix them. Then put it away for two weeks. Work on something else. Finally, edit one last time. Now you are ready to sub your first work. Criticism is hard to take at first. Trust me, I've been there. But learn to think of crit marks as a knife. Each one is designed to cut away the bad and leave a scar. Scars prove you've lived, learned and walked away a winner. Any writer who tells you they don't need edits is lying. I don't care if they have 100 books out. Edits make you grow and if you aren't growing as a writer, you are dead. ↗

— Inez Kelley

#writers #writers-on-writing #design

A good story is a dream shared by the author and the reader. Anything that wakes the reader from the dream is a mortal sin. ↗

— Victor J. Banis

#reading #writing #dreams

It's okay to embark on writing because you think it will get you love. At least it gets you going, but it doesn't last. After a while you realize that no one cares that much. Then you find another reason: money. You can dream on that one while the bills pile up. Then you think: "Well, I'm the sensitive type. I have to express myself." Do me a favor. Don't be so sensitive. Be tough. It will get you further along when you get rejected. Finally, you just do it because you happen to like it. ↗

— Natalie Goldberg

#dreams

Unicorns, dragons, witches may be creatures conjured up in dreams, but on the page their needs, joys, anguishes, and redemptions should be just as true as those of Madame Bovary or Martin Chuzzlewit. ↗

— Alberto Manguel

#genre #writing #dreams

But 'why then publish?' There are no rewards Of fame or profit when the world grows weary. I ask in turn why do you play at cards? Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary. It occupies me to turn back regards On what I've seen or pondered, sad or cheery, And what I write I cast upon the stream To swim or sink. I have had at least my dream. ↗

— George Gordon Byron

#dreams

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. ↗

— George Orwell

#pain

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts. ↗

— Harper Lee

#fact

Fiction---good fiction, anyway---is dream made flesh, given purpose and drive, and set on a quest to show us the best in us and to give us the power and the tools to dream beyond reality's 'merely good enough' to a vision of what is truly great... ...and then to give us the stories of men and women of character who in turn inspire those of us who dare to reach for the truly great within ourselves. THAT is why you write fiction. ↗

— Holly Lisle

#inspirational #writing #writing-advice #dreams

If there's a will, there's a way! I feel larger than LIFE--and look up to the stars who shine down on me and have become my own personal cheerleaders....as my fingers tap on my computer late into the night.. ↗

— Donna Scrima-Black

#dreams #inspiration #writing #dreams

Dreaming is the day job of novelists, but sharing our dreams is a still more important task for us. We cannot be novelists without this sense of sharing something. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#writing #dreams