By Deborah Brodie
I can't remember exactly when I picked this book up, but I know it was likely a random grab while I was an intern at Southfield Public Library, so circa 2007-8? Re-reading these quotes make me think I might be closer to the editor's side of the writing force than I thought. Eww. I can't help it! Found these notes in some old digital notes and I am most pleased with the score. Enjoy!
"Just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." ~Red Smith, Sportswriter (and I believe my journalism professor, Tim Kiska, quoted Red regularly)
"It's amazing the things people will tell you, especially when one is a writer. I feel I'm constantly swimming through this maze of stories." ~John Guare, playwright
"Inspiration is to work every day." Charles Baudelaire, poet
"Know something sugar? Stories only happen to the people who can tell them. ~Allan Gurganus, novelist
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Don even listen, simply wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet." ~Franz Kafka
"Most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or playing a game, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in. You're working, your mind is working, on this problem in the back of your head." ~Henry Miller
"Cross out every sentence until you come to one you cannot do without. That is your beginning." ~Gary Provost, writing teacher
"Murder your darlings." ~Eric Hodgins, magazine publisher and novelist.
"I do what I consider to be 60% of the research; then I begin writing. It's when you write that you learn what you don't know - and what you need to find out." David McCullough, historian and biographer
"The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon." Robert Cormier, novelist
"In this act of creation and constant judgement of it as he is creating, the writer is like someone trying to measure a dream with a dissolving ruler." Bernard Malamud, novelist
"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing." Benjamin Franklin, statesman and inventor
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