Ten Quotes for Aspiring Writers
By: Breneth Edwards
Tags: Creativity, Quotes, Creative Process, Advice, Writing

10. Louisa May Alcott

I want to do something splendid…

Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead…

I think I shall write books.

9. Andre Dubus III

Habits of writing can be learned. We can choose concrete language over overtly abstract language. We can learn to use active verbs instead of passive verbs. To bring in at least three of the five senses to activate a scene. All these things we can be taught, or learn on our own from reading. These are all part of your toolbox – but that toolbox will always remain locked if the writer is not genuinely curious about what he or she is writing about.

8. David Mitchell

I get my major characters to write me a letter about their formative childhood experiences, other characters, the world of the book, class, money, sex, work. Writing it in their own language is crucial, choice of words is highly revealing and is the best means for delivering information about a character. It is an antidote to writer’s block, I usually get stuck because I don’t know my characters well enough.

7. Ernest Hemingway

Always stop while you are going good and don’t worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start. Once you are into the novel it is as cowardly to worry about whether you can go on the next day as to worry about having to go into inevitable action. You have to go on. So there’s no sense to worry. You have to learn that to write a novel. The hard part about a novel is to finish it.

6. E.L. Doctorow

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

5. A.L. Kennedy (on endings)

You’ll probably be tired but equally this is the most thrilling part of writing a novel. Hopefully your plot has now defined a course of inevitability and gathered a critical mass. Your characters should be doing the things they must do, and the whole situation will be helping to carry itself…try not to let this very good situation lead you into a final pitfall. Don’t allow yourself to be swept along into a hurried conclusion. Keep your head and give it the time and space it needs. A little discipline here will save you a lot of rewriting.

4. Hanif Kureshi

I was afraid to write because I was ashamed of my feelings and beliefs. The practice of any art can be a good excuse for self-loathing. You require a certain shamelessness to be any kind of artist. But to be shameless you need not to mind who you are.

Sometimes writers like to imagine that the difficulty of becoming a writer resides in convincing others that that is what you are. But really the problem is in convincing yourself.

3. Samuel Beckett

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

2. Tom Perrotta

The way I felt when I was reading – that sense of a world created by words. I thought it would be fun to try that myself.

I do believe that there’s such a thing as talent, but I think persistence is an even more important quality for a writer to possess. It can be a long road to get where you’re going.

Hilary Mantel

The most helpful quality a writer can cultivate is self-confidence – arrogance, if you can manage it. You write to impose yourself on the world, and you have to believe in your own ability when the world shows you no sign of agreeing with you. A book isn’t quickly achieved and the road to publication can be strewn with obstacles. It is especially important to be self-confident if you have no contacts and do not know other writers. If you are unpublished you can still say to yourself, ‘I am a writer.’ You should define yourself as such.

There you have it. Write, persevere, write, believe in yourself, write, fail, write, survive failure, write, be curious, write, and finish what you’ve started. Now, write.