My writer friend: Just how serious are you about it?
"It is not enough for a man to feel the divine flame burning in him; unless he goes into the concentrated, slogging business of learning the techniques of expression, his genius will be of no use to anyone." —Oswald Chambers
My writer friend: Just how serious are you about it? "It is not enough for a man to feel the divine flame burning in him; unless he goes into the concentrated, slogging business of learning the techniques of expression, his genius will be of no use to anyone." —Oswald Chambers
“No man can know what power he can rightly call his own unless he presses a little,” he wrote.
Stephen Cope • The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling
A real writer (or artist or entrepreneur) has something to give. She has lived enough and suffered enough and thought deeply enough about her experience to be able to process it into something that is of value to others, even if only as entertainment.
Steven Pressfield • Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It
One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.
James Baldwin • Notes of a Native Son
“Lots of people,” as the poet and artist Austin Kleon puts it, “want to be the noun without doing the verb.” To make something great, what’s required is need. As in, I need to do this. I have to. I can’t not.
Ryan Holiday • Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
having an idea is not enough; that you must work until you are able to recreate your experience effectively in words on the page.