A day in Brighton…QUOTES FOR WRITERS (and festival goers)
May is festival time in my adopted home town of Brighton – every year we host the second largest arts festival in the northern hemisphere (and the third largest in … Continue reading
Where to Draw the Line…advice from scriptwriter Sue Teddern QUOTES FOR WRITERS
Learning how to write drama means learning how to cope with meddling. You’ll have to identify the boundary between what it’s reasonable for you to accept (‘We think it might … Continue reading
…stories are about what you lose…John Irving QUOTES FOR WRITERS
Be serious, Life hurts, reflect what hurts. I don’t mean that you can’t also be funny, or have fun, but at the end of the day, stories are about what … Continue reading
Looking forward to April…a slam-bang return to joy, says Barbara Kingsolver QUOTES FOR WRITERS
Every religious tradition from the northern hemisphere honors some form of April hallelujah, for this is the season of exquisite redemption, a slam-bang return to joy after a season of … Continue reading
Irritating aspects of Punctuation – E. L. Doctorow QUOTES FOR WRITING
I like commas. I detest semi-colons – I don’t think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn’t need them, they … Continue reading
One of the great advantages books have over films…Alan Moore QUOTES FOR WRITERS
In comics the reader is in complete control of the experience. They can read it at their own pace, and if there’s a piece of dialogue that seems to echo … Continue reading
Read Anything You Want. Just Read, says Matt Haig QUOTES FOR WRITERS
Read Emily Dickinson. Read Graham Greene. Read Italo Calvino. Read Maya Angelou. Read anything you want. Just read. Books are possibilities. They are Escape Routes. They give you options when … Continue reading
Don’t be the writer who never, explores, searches, sieves for the right word…Rumer Godden QUOTES FOR WRITERS
A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory…dictionaries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like … Continue reading
If you want to write a story you only have one goal…
‘Good story’ means something worth telling that the world wants to hear. Finding this is your lonely task…But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world … Continue reading
Developing empathy – what fiction does for us: Laila Lalami QUOTES FOR WRITERS
Stories help us see the world through the eyes of others: We see what they see; we’re provoked or inspired or amused; we take sides or withhold judgment—but in the … Continue reading
What inspires us – Seamus Heaney QUOTES FOR WRITERS
‘Inspiration…it’s a large ancient word. It means something that tempts you, that suggests you could go ahead – a little flicker of energy. It doesn’t need to be dramatic, just … Continue reading
In hard times we need writers who can be realists of a larger reality…says Ursula K. Le Guin QUOTES FOR WRITERS
Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive … Continue reading
Barbara Kingsolver’s advice on writer’s block… QUOTES FOR WRITERS
It doesn’t matter how many books I’ve published, starting the next one always feels as daunting as the first. A day comes when I just have to make a deal … Continue reading
Maybe a good writer doesn’t need…QUOTES FOR WRITERS
I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it. Chinua Achebe
