Q: How do I find inspiration to write?
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Answer(s) to this Question ( 1 / 12 ) |
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Finding Inspiration Inspiration for the budding writer is everywhere.
*Reread those books that first got you interested in writing as a youngster--for me it was JANE EYRE. I thought the story was great, and that Charlotte Bronte was extremely cool for her determination to write what was in her heart. This is where the writerly ambition begins.
*Attend readings and booksignings with writers you admire (and some you´ve never heard of!). Ask questions during the Q&A session--find out how the writer works and what makes him or her set pen to paper.
*Scan the headlines for events worthy of fiction. "Man found dead in home with 300 chickens," etc.
*Make lists of your peak experiences, low points, and moments of epiphane. You will return to these again and again.
Earnest Hemingway"My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."
John Steinbeck"When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day´s works is all I can permit myself to contemplate."
Mark Twain"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
William Faulkner"Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the most. Read! You´ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you´ll find out. If it´s not, throw it out the window."
Barbara Kingsolver"Close 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."
Albert Einstein(Ok, he´s not so much a writer, but he did have some wonderful ideas...)
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
Margaret Atwood"A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason."
Kate Braverman"Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating."
Your unique storyAlways remember when you are writing that the thing you are trying to create is valuable because it is coming from you. Your life story is unlike anyone else´s that has ever lived. Your point of view, your impressions are all unique, and so your words are priceless. Remember that in the face of rejection, exhaustion, writer´s block, and frustration.
Eudora Welty"To imagine yourself inside another person...is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose."
Guy de Maupassant"Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing."
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Creative Writing Frequently Asked Questions
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