the why in writing
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
all serious intellectual work happens on the page, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. If you want to contribute to the world of ideas, if you want to entertain and manipulate complex thoughts, you have to read and write.
Text is king
A writer’s greatest responsibility is to his readers, to keep providing them with the best work that he is capable of turning out.
Haruki Murakami • Novelist as a Vocation
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
The primary task of a writer is to write well. (And to go on writing well. Neither to burn out nor to sell out.) ... Let the dedicated activist never overshadow the dedicated servant of literature — the matchless storyteller.
Maria Popova • Susan Sontag on Storytelling, What It Means to Be a Good Human Being, and Her Advice to Writers
Making space for writing is making space for you.