“Sometimes you write for 10 hours and never come up with a single thing you like, and then you wake up the next day and the right phrase is just sitting there for you at the front of your mind like a lukewarm snack cake from an easy-bake oven.”— rachel syme, twitter.com
“The point is to get a pro's eyes on your work. Whether that's a career writer you admire, an agent, or an editor working with a legit publisher, their feedback can often give you the barometer for where you are and what you need to do to level up.”— Delilah S. Dawson, twitter.com
“The hard thing about publishing is you need professional feedback to grow your skills, but you can't get professional feedback until you have skills. I feel like this is why so many people lose hope in the query trenches. The solution: Take a class, go to a conf., join a group.”— Delilah S. Dawson, twitter.com
“Plenty of people with talent doubt themselves. Plenty of writers I know are deathly afraid they stink. Confidence is great and all, but you don't have to have it to be a good writer. You just have to keep going and committing yourself to leveling up.”— Delilah S. Dawson, twitter.com
“Whatever gets the job done and doesn't make you hate yourself or self-destruct is the right way to do it. Whenever I give advice here, I'm speaking to the writer I was in 2009.”— Delilah S. Dawson, twitter.com
“I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple--or a green field--a place to enter, and in which to feel.”— Mary Oliver, goodreads.com
“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.”— Mary Oliver, goodreads.com
“I have a certain niche that I work in. A lot of it has to be about alienation. Being on the outside of things. That tends to be where I feel more comfortable as a writer.”— David Bowie, amazon.com
“I just wrote the truth, and it made me feel better. So I wrote more. I felt even better. After two years of telling the truth on the page, as I know it, I've written an entire book and it helped reshape my view on life, my work, my body, my family, and, most importantly, myself.”— Gabourey Sidibe, amazon.com
“This is embarrassing, but when I was a teenager I used to write fan fiction about the pop group NSYNC.”— Gabourey Sidibe, amazon.com
“If you are paid to write you should not use the word misconduct when you mean rape that's just sloppy writing.”— Saladin Ahmed, twitter.com
“I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.”— George Bernard Shaw, en.wikiquote.org
“The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dir…”— Groucho Marx, books.google.com
“On writing Start with one word or one thought. Write it down. Is it the right word or thought? Is there a better word or thought? Get that *one single thing* right, then move onto the next.”— Quiara Alegría Hudes, twitter.com
“You know what to say, though you may have buried it so deep it needs excavating. So no more excuses, dispense with the wordplay, don't waste time being timid. Unearth it, write it.”— Quiara Alegría Hudes, twitter.com
“Writing is an act of paying attention. Of moving towards the essential which lies, hidden, behind the costumes, baubles & doodads of survival. Remove all the noise and explore what you are left with: what is your self busy hiding from your self?”— Quiara Alegría Hudes, twitter.com
“Trying not to cry. when i cry while writing, the writing turns broad. But if i can stave off the tears, stand at the exact horizon where they well up but don't quite fall. . .good thinking lies there, clarity & fullness, at that border.”— Quiara A Hudes, twitter.com
“A train uptown writing ?'s: How does the story start? When did the question take root? When did u realize ur world was not just ordinary but lit & urgent & in need of articulation? You had choices. Why did you dedicate years to building this particular throne?”— Quiara A Hudes, twitter.com
“Here's one thing that makes it hard to finish a novel: Going down the Twitter rabbit hole.”— Gayle Forman, twitter.com
“Throughout my 20s and most of my 30s, I was convinced I was never going to make it as a writer.”— Roxane Gay, nytimes.com