roundcat

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.

—Ernest Hemingway

(Source: amandaonwriting)

amandaonwriting: Anne Enright - On Writing 1. The first 12 years are the worst.2. The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.3. Only bad writers think that their work is really good.4. Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.5. Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn’t matter how “real” your story is, or how “made up”: what matters is its necessity.6. Try to be accurate about stuff.7. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.8. You can also do all that with whiskey.9. Have fun.10. Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free. This advice was first published in The Guardian Anne Enright is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. 

amandaonwriting:

Anne Enright - On Writing

1. The first 12 years are the worst.
2. The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.
3. Only bad writers think that their work is really good.
4. Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.
5. Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn’t matter how “real” your story is, or how “made up”: what matters is its necessity.
6. Try to be accurate about stuff.
7. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you ­finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die.
8. You can also do all that with whiskey.
9. Have fun.
10. Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not ­counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.

This advice was first published in The Guardian

Anne Enright is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. 

One of the reasons I became a writer is that, unlike starting a band, directing movies, or acting in a theatrical production, you can do it alone. Your success and failure depend entirely on yourself. I’ve never trusted collaborations, because most people in this world are not closers. They don’t finish what they start; they don’t live what they dream; they sabotage their own progress because they’re afraid they won’t find what they seek.

— N. Strauss (via perryjohn)

(via teachingliteracy)

Being tender and open is beautiful. As a woman, I feel continually shhh’ed. Too sensitive. Too mushy. Too wishy washy. Blah blah. Don’t let someone steal your tenderness. Don’t allow the coldness and fear of others to tarnish your perfectly vulnerable beating heart. Nothing is more powerful than allowing yourself to truly be affected by things. Whether it’s a song, a stranger, a mountain, a rain drop, a tea kettle, an article, a sentence, a footstep…feel it all – look around you. All of this is for you. Take it and have gratitude. Give it and feel love.

—Zooey Deschanel

(Source: kimbaa99, via creatingaquietmind)

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

—Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (via writersbloqinc)

(Source: bookmania, via teachingliteracy)