the why in writing
Joe Hudson • Tweet
Susan Sontag on Storytelling, What It Means to Be a Good Human Being, and Her Advice to Writers
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
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
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.
Kurt Vonnegut • Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style
Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not.
Rick Rubin • The Creative Act: A Way of Being
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.
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