Monday, November 29, 2010

Day 31--Mary Anne Radmacher

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.



Sunday, November 28, 2010

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Day 33--Hart Crane

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Day 34--Francine Prose

Like most--maybe all--writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

day 35--Pearl S. Buck

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

day 36--Stephen King

If you don't have time to read,
you don't have th time
or the tools
to write.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Day 37--Colette

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Day 38--Margaret Atwood

We have all been little pitchers with big ears, shooed out of the kitchen when the unspoken is being spoken, and we have probably all been tale-bearers, blurters at the dinner table, unwitting violators of adult rules of censorship. Perhaps this is what writers are: those who never kicked the habit. We remained tale-bearers. We learned to keep our eyes open, but not to keep our mouths shut.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Day 39--Gloria Steinem

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Friday, November 19, 2010

Day 41-- Katherine Ann Porter

Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Day 42--Steve Martin

Writing is one of the most easy, pain-free, and happy ways to pass the time in all the arts. For example, right now I am sitting in my rose garden and typing on my new computer. Each rose represents a story, so I'm never at a loss for what to write. I just look deep into the heart of the rose and read its story and write it down through typing, which I enjoy anyway. I could be typing "kjfiu joewmv jiw" and would enjoy it as much as typing words that actually make sense. I simply relish the movement of my fingers on the keys. Sometimes, it is true, agony visits the head of a writer. At those moments, I stop writing and relax with a coffee at my favorite restaurant, knowing that words can be changed, rethought, fiddled with, and, of course ultimately denied. Painters don't have that luxury. If they go to a coffee shop, their paint dries into a hard mass.
 From Pure Drivel, Hyperion Press, 1998

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Day 43--H.G.Wells

No passion in the world
is equal to the passion
to alter someone else's draft.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Day 44--Rita Mae Brown

A deadline is negative inspiration.
Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Day 45--Theodore Geisel

It has often been said
there's so much to be read
you never can cram all those thoughts in your head.
So the writer who breeds
more words than he needs
is making a chore for the reader who reads.
That's why my belief is
the briefer the brief is
the greater the sigh of the reader's relief is.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Day 46--Annie Dillard

A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you can't catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!"

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Day 47--Flannery O'Connor

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Day 48--Edna Ferber

Only amatures say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain climbing, treadmill and childbirth.

 Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Day 49--Erica Jong

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Day 50--Goethe

The most orginal of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Day 51--Judy Blume

Sometimes I think I don't want to write anymore; it's too hard, it's too painful,
but I'm happiest when I'm locked up in that little room inventing characters...

Monday, November 8, 2010

Day 52--Elie Wiesel

Write only if you cannot live without writing.
Write only what you alone can write.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Day 54--Willa Cather

If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Day 55--Whoopi Goldberg

I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities. 
           

Friday, November 5, 2010

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Try This. £5000 for 100 Words.

Try This. £5000 for 100 Words.


Been writing 100 words a day for these last 100 days of the year? How about this for incentive?

Day 57--Bette Davis

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

day 59--Toni Morrison

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."