In defining the qualities writers need to succeed, persistence is often cited. Actually, though, it is beside the point. The ability writers possess to doggedly pursue their writing doesn’t come from an abstract quality of character. It comes from love. Writers love the experience writing gives them. And they love their vision of the writing [...]
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As a writer . . . you probably know there are creative ways of handling just about anything. Anything at all. What you may not know, maybe not yet, is that all those “bloopers” (which arise when you are working on something new, and perhaps never before seen) can be cause for exhilarating inspiration. If [...]
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People who are not — and do not want to be — authors, often make the mistake of imagining that those who are, and do, possess a super-human strain of self-discipline. A stellar character trait that they, alas, lack. But it isn’t true. What authors, and those working daily toward authorship, have, is actually [...]
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For poet T.S. Eliot, April was famously “the cruelest month.” But it’s National Poetry Month, now — a month to pay attention to poems. In other words, words. Here are a few. On the grass, the pigeons are still gathered where they were nested for the night. Though a few early risers are up [...]
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If . . writing regularly about things that truly interest them, writers feel their life force double or triple in two ways: First, they feel the happiness of engaging with something that matters — to them. Second, they feel the “after effect” of regular and meaningful writing, which is an energy of livingness. Though similar [...]
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Books enter the lives of most authors early on, and accumulate like small sand dunes or softly drifting snow in the corners and interstices of their lives — pretty much ever after. There is a reason for this. Authors are readers first. They read the way they breathe: naturally, on impulse, as if satisfying [...]
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Books are not actually “written.” They are dropped onto the page, one drop at a time, one day at a time. -By authors who know that, very small increments of writing are what actually create a book. Over time. It’s like this. A cold morning in December, and you want your cup of coffee. But [...]
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Out of the blue, this morning, I heard this phrase in my inner ear: Writing doesn’t have to be a chore. Okay, I thought, I’ll write about that. Thank you, subconscious mind! Writing, I wrote on the nearest piece of lined paper, doesn’t have to be a chore. It can be an adventure. [...]
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“A writer looking for subjects,” observes Annie Dillard in The Writing Life, “inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.” In other words, authors are compelled to tell other people about some small corner of the world’s marvels that they alone find fascinating. That small corner is [...]
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