the why in writing
Writing clarifies your own ideas. Writing begets new ideas too. Writing lets you explore ideas in depth even if you won’t have time to act on them all. Writing shows people how you think and lets ... See more
Anu • Writer-Builders
Talking or writing about the things you're interested in is a good way to generate new ideas. When you try to put ideas into words, a missing idea creates a sort of vacuum that draws it out of you. Indeed, there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing.
How to Do Great Work
What Writing Can Help Us Do: Name our experience so we can more fully understand it. Give language to the future we want to create so it stops feeling vague and begins to seem achievable. Build a bridge (neural pathways) between the now we’re experiencing and the future we’d like to create. Heal and engineer our own resilience from past experience.
... See moreAllison Fallon • The Power of Writing It Down: A Simple Habit to Unlock Your Brain and Reimagine Your Life
All novels, short stories, and plays, and most poems, are about human transformation. The subject of the novel is the human spirit and psyche—how the characters interact in their relationships with other souls and with the world in general.
Walter Mosley • This Year You Write Your Novel
Susan Sontag on Storytelling, What It Means to Be a Good Human Being, and Her Advice to Writers
The one practice I kept was writing. It made the cut because I can’t deny how many good things in my life have come as a result of my putting words out into the world. It also felt like a respite: one area where I wasn’t skeptical of my identity. I’m at my most courageous on the page because interrogating my feelings with words feels justified and
... See moreMolly Mielke • (self) concept
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about [italics mine]. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.