remarkable things

"As for discipline – it’s important, but sort of over-rated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. You will make vows: “I’m going to write for an hour every day,” and then you won’t do it. You will think: “I suck, I’m such a failure. I’m washed-up.” Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness (which comes from a place of kind and encouraging and motherly love). The other thing to realize is that all writers think they suck. When I was writing “Eat, Pray, Love”, I had just as a strong a mantra of THIS SUCKS ringing through my head as anyone does when they write anything. But I had a clarion moment of truth during the process of that book. One day, when I was agonizing over how utterly bad my writing felt, I realized: “That’s actually not my problem.” The point I realized was this – I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write. So I put my head down and sweated through it, as per my vows."

Elizabeth Gilbert

who, quite frankly, I adore.

"

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you.

Tarantino - you can criticize everything that Quentin does - but nobody writes Tarantino stuff like Tarantino. He is the best Tarantino writer there is, and that was actually the thing that people responded to - they’re going ‘this is an individual writing with his own point of view’.

There are better writers than me out there, there are smarter writers, there are people who can plot better - there are all those kinds of things, but there’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can.

"

- A bit of writing advice from Neil Gaiman. (via faramirs)

I said it on the Nerdist Podcast, and I believe it. It’s as true for any area of the arts, not just writing. Perhaps it’s true for life.

(via neil-gaiman)

Listen to the full podcast here.

Also: “Nobody cares about your first draft… Just get the words out.”

(via vespertinehour)

Write Like A Motherfucker »

How many women wrote beautiful novels and stories and poems and essays and plays and scripts and songs in spite of all the crap they endured. How many of them didn’t collapse in a heap of “I could have been better than this” and instead went right ahead and became better than anyone would have predicted or allowed them to be. The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you –,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simplydig.

You need to do the same, dear sweet arrogant beautiful crazy talented tortured rising star glowbug. That you’re so bound up about writing tells me that writing is what you’re here to do. And when people are here to do that they almost always tell us something we need to hear. I want to know what you have inside you. I want to see the contours of your second beating heart.

So write. Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker.

i made this thing yesterday while I was feeling blue. it helps to make art when I find it difficult to write. it says this true thing I wrote in my journal the other day:

some days, I don’t feel strong enough to be a writer
to turn inward and explore my natural shadows
some days all I can really do
is close my eyes
and stay in bed
and try to cultivate the strength I need
to continue the excavation of my secrets

Paper Moons & Cardboard Skies

So […] if you like narrative, pursue it. Use it. Explore it fully and passionately and decide how it serves your project, the story you’re trying to tell. When someone tells you narrative is false, is a lie, you tell them, it’s all a lie. We work in theatre. It’s all made up, paper moons and cardboard skies. Hell, if you’re feeling your oats, tell them that telling a good, smart, sharp story that takes your audience out of their seats and into the world of the play, well, that’s harder, isn’t it, than reminding them over and over that this is all false, or that narrative doesn’t exist, or whatever artsy fartsy notion they’re peddling. Making your audience believe false things are true? That takes work. You tell them that. And then you go to work.

Read the full post here: http://parabasis.typepad.com/blog/2011/05/defending-narrative.html

invictus.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

matchstrikes:

fuckyeahladywriters:

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