Tips for Writers...Words mean more than we mean to express when we use them.
- Lewis Carroll.
To write without clarity and charm is a miserable waste of time and ink.
- Cicero
Look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you.
- Colette
Fury for perfection makes me... and everyone I respect difficult to work with. What nobody understands is that one's fury comes from oneself and is directed to oneself. The pressure that people feel is merely the after burn of that blastoff. They have no right to stand too close unless they are insured against fire --
- John Dexter
I now think of writing as a privilege -- as a gift that's been given to me. Any day that I don't get to write something -- anything -- is a day I have to spend being someone other than who I am --
- Larry Gelbart
Never write about anything that bores you, if it bores you, it will bore those you're writing for. Write every chance you get.
- Whoopi Goldberg
I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can still do something --
- Edward Everett Hale
The great thing is to last and get your work done, and see and hear and understand and write when there is something that you know and not before and not too much afterwards.
- Ernest Hemingway
Book, if you're lucky, you'll be loved; if you're unlucky, you'll be chewed by worms and forgotten; if you're very unlucky, you'll end up a textbook.
- Horace
If you go out to fight for the truth, be sure not to wear your best pants --
- Henrik Ibsen
Writing is the great invention of the world, [allowing us] to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space... Take it [away] from us, and the Bible, all history, and nearly all social intercourse go with it.
- Abraham Lincoln
Don't ever have children unless you're short of material. But remember, you can always write about your parents. They deserve it.
- Jenny Lumet
...writing is also the purge of what is good and bad in yourself and writers who write sweet books, pastorales, idylls and hymns to the human condition end up snarling old beasts in their senility.
- Norman Mailer
Why don't I send you my poems to read? Because I'm afraid that you might send me yours.
- Martial
They praise good books, but they read bad ones.
- Martial
This may sound like the most basic and obvious of tips, but always keep your eyes and ears open, no matter where you are in New York City; your fellow citizens are a never-ending source of material. From "hearing" the style and cadence of a particular character's voice, or stealing a catchy one-liner, to absorbing the emotional rhythms of a couple's spat, you can use this natural resource to inspire your own writing, or as a jumping off point for a scene that's been troubling you. I find the Public Transportation system especially helpful. Just last night, I stole a line from a very cute guy, who was particularly clever in the way he offered a woman his seat. He was charming; she was charmed; it was a perfect moment. And no, I'm not gonna tell you what he said. Wait for it in my next script.
- Julie Martin, Consulting Producer "Law & Order"
A plague on those who said our wise words before we did.
- Saint Jerome
The simplest and most important advice I ever received was from a composer. She said the thing that matters most is to finish something you’re working on.
I thought she was speaking lightly, or at any rate as a slightly mischievous provocateur. I don’t think so any more. Until you finish a work, you are someone writing. Once it’s done, and you’ve swapped all the wonderful dreams of what it might become for the more real appraisal of what you’ve actually wrought, you’re not ready for the real work. And until you are ready, until you must decide whether or not you’ve made something to which you’re willing to devote time, craft, energy, doubts overcome, wrong turns, blind alleys faced and escaped… in other words, to face the hard uphill slog that makes a writer a writer, you are like many millions of people seated at their laptops in Starbucks across the universe, only someone writing. Finish what you’re working on. Best advice I ever got.
- Michael Weller
For me, a convenient place to work is a remote place among strangers where there is good swimming...
- Tennessee Williams
It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention.
- Tennessee Williams
|
