Writing. Do not disturb.
Yes, I’m talking to you, Tumblr.
Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.
AL Kennedy (via amandaonwriting)
(via okamimars)
(Source: amandaonwriting)
3 days ago - 
14
14Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
Barbara Kingsolver (via amandaonwriting)
Self-doubt is the writer’s nemesis.
At least it’s mine. I’m slowly drowning in it: how am I going to do this? I can’t write this. I don’t know enough about this topic. Everyone is better than me. I fail at life.
And all because I’ve decided to try Camp NaNoWriMo this summer (for the first time ever) and write a 50,000 word novel in one month. I feel like I’m defeating myself before I have even started. Story of my life, sadly.
But not this time, no. I will do this even if I fail.
4 days ago - 1
1 If you want something to be clear straightaway then it’s probably better not to read my books. Read somebody else’s. I don’t really feel that I should be held accountable for writing the kinds of books that I want to write just because some reader I can’t imagine or will never know doesn’t want to read them. It seems a bit unfair. You can’t win in the art stakes, because there is always somebody who is cross with you. So that’s why it is better not to care and instead think, Well, I must really do my work, hope that it reaches people and leave the rest to chance. That’s often mistaken for arrogance, but it isn’t. You have to believe that you are good, because if you think you are rubbish, why are you doing this stuff anyway? And what are you doing chucking it out there for people to buy?
Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 150, Jeanette Winterson (via leopoldgursky)
(via leopoldgursky)
2 weeks ago - 5
5
I need to write a short horror story and I’m struggling with it. It’s not a genre I usually explore when I write; definitely not a genre I read often (if at all). Help!
(Source: brain-food, via loyalbelieve)
When I feel afraid, that’s an indication that I’ve tapped into something worth writing about. Whenever my writing has made me cry or ask, ‘Can I really say that?’ that has always been the material that readers respond to most passionately. You can recognize when a writer has told you something true—and I don’t mean true in a literal, nonfiction way… To do that, you welcome fear into the room. You welcome sorrow into the room. You go deep into those places.
Cheryl Strayed « Writers « The Days of Yore (via leopoldgursky)
(via leopoldgursky)
I have an image of myself on the bench during recess working and reworking the sentences … hoping beyond hope that there was life in this book, that books could be my life.
David Shields, “Life Is Short; Art Is Shorter” (via leopoldgursky)
(Source: lareviewofbooks.org, via leopoldgursky)
1 month ago - 5
5
