okayophelia:

[made rebloggable by request]

read like a motherfucker. don’t learn from your betters, just inhale them. imprint rhythms and chokeholds and things-that-shoot-up-your-spine into your fingertips. read how romance novels create characters so vivid you want to fuck them and have them be fucked. read brutal minimalism and extravagant prose. read children’s books to remember about wonder and post-modernists to remember about freedom. read because at some point you will be so full with the consumption of language you will need to start pouring it back out again.

write like an asshole. write things when you’ve stayed up so late you are delirious. write when you’re drunk. write when a song has made you feel catastrophic. write when you’re famished. write when you’re spitting mad. write so you don’t curl up in the bottom of a shower and sob. write when people have torn strips off you. write when you’re high on adrenaline. write because there’s a monster on your back and you need to make it real and separate from your soul. eventually, you will not need any of these props to make you brave enough.

seriously. that’s it.

amandaonwriting:

Writing Secrets from 10 Authors

1. The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. ~Mark Twain
2. People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it. ~Harlan Ellison
3. The secret is to start a story near the ending. ~Chris Offut
4. The secret of successful fiction is a continual slight novelty. ~Edmund Gosse
5. The big secret is the ability to stay in the room. ~Ron Carlson
6. The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work. ~Augusten Burroughs
7. It’s hard to explain how much one can love writing. If people knew how happy it can make you, we would all be writing all the time. It’s the greatest secret of the world. ~Andrea Barrett
8. Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to ‘get in touch with your feelings’, fine—talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts. ~William Safire
9. The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught. ~Walt Whitman
10. If there is a secret to writing, I haven’t found it yet. All I know is you need to sit down, clear your mind, and hang in there. ~Mary McGrory

From Writers Write

youmightfindyourself:

1. Sheer egoism- Orwell argues that many people write simply to feel clever, to “be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups in childhood, etc.” He says that this is a great motive, although most of humanity is not “acutely selfish”, and that this motive exists mainly in younger writers. He also says that it exists more in serious writers than journalists, though serious writers are “less interested in money”.
2. Aesthetic enthusiasm- Orwell explains that present in writing is the desire to make one’s writing look and sound good, having “pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story.” He says that this motive is “very feeble in a lot of writers” but still present in all works of writing.
3. Historical impulse- He sums this up by simply stating this motive is the “desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”
4. Political purpose- Orwell writes that “no book is genuinely free from political bias”, and further explains that this motive is used very commonly in all forms of writing in the broadest sense, citing a “desire to push the world in a certain direction” in every person. He concludes by saying that “the opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

i love/hate writing about things I’ve never experienced. I love it because it’s always fun and exciting researching something new and shiny. I hate it because I feel like it’s impossible to bring justice when describing said thing.

i don’t know about you guys but “what are you writing about?” is equivilant to “what are your deepest darkest kinky sex desires that you would rather cut a toe off then reveal to a living and breathing soul?”

We spin in and out of control. The center cannot hold but we tease gravity in the dark and lean inward. Half on the ground half in the air, we dilly-dally and scream until we crash down, falling forward against the restraints.

I rise and howl at what light is left with fists pressed against the sides. We are alive, alive, alive.

“Christ.”

I fall against the seat, shift into drive once more and grip the wheel.

“Again?”

“Again.”

teachingliteracy:

amandaonwriting:

The Top 10 Writers Block Quotes

1. Writer’s block? I’ve heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn’t a writer anymore. I’m sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing for a living. ~Warren Ellis

2. I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done. ~Barbara Kingsolver

3. All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it? ~Philip Pullman

4. I’ve often said that there’s no such thing as writer’s block; the problem is idea block. When I find myself frozen–whether I’m working on a brief passage in a novel or brainstorming about an entire book–it’s usually because I’m trying to shoehorn an idea into the passage or story where it has no place. ~Jeffery Deaver

5. You can’t think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out of a thinking block. ~John Rogers

6. There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write. ~Terry Pratchett

7. I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen. ~Jennifer Egan

8.Writer’s block doesn’t exist…lack of imagination does. ~Cyrese Covelli

9. Writer’s Block is just an excuse by people who don’t write for not writing. ~Giando Sigurani 

10. Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch. ~Lili St. Crow

marshdogs:

these are good.

He looked out at the Mojave’s horizon, drinking in miles of land until the Earth’s curve allowed him no more. Dull brush spotted the landscape, but he knew that beneath the ground where he knelt roots where alive and thriving. He knew that somewhere sat a lizard on a stone, bathing in the sun. A bird drinking water from a cactus. A snake spying his meal. He knew that a place that looked dead to the naked eye, was breathing.

Memory consumed him and he closed his eyes. He recalled the time he and friends had found a ravine. Kicking up dirt, they raced inside following the meandering trail that took thousands of years to create. They dared each other to climb the cool, clay walls that stretched toward cobalt sky. They dug their fingers into cracks and nooks, ignoring the dust crumbling to the ground with each movement. It was stupid seeing who’d scale the furthest. They nearly fell to their deaths. The dirt under his fingernails took a week to clean away.

 Or the time he and his brother came across salt flats. They broke the tiled plates with the balls of their feet, throwing the dried concoction at each other and accidently hitting their sister. She flapped her arms, shouting in frustration, her voice lost in the vast nothingness surrounding them. His father had scolded the two and gathered the lot of them, leaving the place behind. He regretted not mapping the spot. He never found the flats again.

One of his favorite memories was after a long rain. Wild flowers of orange, purple and yellow sprouted from the earth, bringing a sea of color to a land that had none. He pictured her on cotton blanket, an orange flower mingling with her gold hair that danced in the breeze. The way she rolled her eyes at his joke and her lips curved up after.

No, dying here wouldn’t be too bad.

He opened his eyes. “I’m ready.”

“About fucking time.”

Click.