More than likely, if you have a blog it means it is because you want to be a writer whether it be for a magazine, a newspaper, a website – whatever! I know it is certainly the case for me. More specifically I would like to be a novelist. An ideal job for me if I do say do myself. Yet some people don’t view it as a job, instead they see it as a silly old dream. One day I will write a book, published or not, but until then, here are my quotes defending being a writer.
1. Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus – Enid Bagnold
2. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing – George Orwell
3. We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master – Ernest Hemingway
4. Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works – Virginia Woolf
5. To defend what you’ve written is a sign that you are alive – William Zinsser, WD
6. For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word – Catherine Drinker Bowen
7. Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts – Larry L. King, WD
8. I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story – Tom Clancy, WD
9. When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done – Stephen King, WD
10. Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try – Jim Tully, WD
Joyful Antidotes 