Phyllis A. Whitney || In Her Own words

"... Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then you can add all the genius you like ..."

In His Own Words || David Mamet

"Every scene should be able to answer three questions: 'Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?'"

William Golding || In His Own Words

"The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it."
   ~ William Golding

 "If you don't say what you want, what's the sense of writing?"  

- Jack Kerouac

Edward Abbey || In His Own Words

"The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book."

Frank McCourt || In his Own Words

"There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore."

— Frank McCourt

Carl Sagan || In His Own Words

❝In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. ❞  ~ Carl Sagan

Zadie Smith || In Her Own Words

"The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with."
— Zadie Smith

"The past is always tense, the future perfect." — Zadie Smith

"The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life."

— Zadie Smith

"The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport. "

— Zadie Smith

"When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottoes, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognize and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception." — Zadie Smith

"Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection." — Zadie Smith

"He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice." — Zadie Smith

Martin Luther King || In His Own Words

  
"On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it political?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor political, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." 

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Stephen King || In His Own Words

 Quotes on Writing and Other Things

❝Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.❞   
~  Stephen King

William Faulkner || In His Own Words

 ❝ Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write.❞  

༺༻ William Faulkner

An Evening With Ray Bradbury || 2001

Science fiction author Ray Bradbury regales his audience with stories about his life and love of writing in "Telling the Truth," the keynote address of The Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University. Series: Writer's Symposium By The Sea ...

Tuesdays With Morrie || The Man Himself

This was the subject of Mitch Albom's best-selling book 'Tuesdays With Morrie', Professor Morrie Schwartz, former sociology teacher at Brandeis University. Here in an interview with Ted Koppel Morrie shares his lessons on life, in his final class.

E.B. White || In His Own Words

"...Delay is natural to a writer. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor - as though not until everything in the world is lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonable expect me to set a word down on paper ..." 

- E. B. White

 Currently posted: 'The Shut Up And Write' Official User Manual

Bare Bones Writing – Dig It!

The Lost Blog Post

This was a post I was supposed to put up at the Writer's Den in late November, explaining my futile and strange writing process while attempting National Novel Writing Month.  At the time it sounded rather whiny and excuse-laden (typical David!) but upon re-reading it I find that it's quite interesting: it illustrates the inner workings of a writer In Media Res; in the midst of the chaos we call 'Writing'.   So enjoy my first blog post of 2011, a little thing called ... Bare Bones Writing.

"...But still I keep writing, leaving a trail of badly composed (or decomposed) phrases and half realized scenes ..."



 Three weeks ago I was cajoled into taking part in National Novel Writing Month, not because I was shamed into it, but because I saw how much fun everyone was having in the grand attempt to get a book written in 30 days.

Did I say fun? Ha!

Sure, the word count starts off at a manageable clip: 1666 words a day. But when you miss a day, that total climbs by 58 words, then 118, and so on. There’s really no time to mess around. When you start missing two or three days, well, it gets ugly, but the prospect of a marathon session of 10,000 words always seems to soothe the blasted soul and scuppers the guilt for a while.

Until you miss another day, and another. And, who wants to slug out 10,000 words under such pressure?

This is what happens when you start to ponder the incoherent mess being dictated on the pages of your novel ...CONT. ->