CherryWood Violin• Show poetry

Well, I like to start things with quotes, so here are some quotes.


**A Few Random Writing Quotes**

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.
*- Harlan Ellison*

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
*- William Faulkner*

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
*- Eugene Ionesco*

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.
*- Samuel Johnson*

Writing isn't generally a lucrative source of income; only a few, exceptional writers reach the income levels associated with the best-sellers. Rather, most of us write because we can make a modest living, or even supplement our day jobs, doing something about which we feel passionately. Even at the worst of times, when nothing goes right, when the prose is clumsy and the ideas feel stale, at least we're doing something that we genuinely love. There's no other reason to work this hard, except that love.
*- Melissa Scott*

I never started from ideas but always from character.
*- Ivan Turgenev*

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten, --happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
*- Brenda Ueland*

I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn.
*- P. G. Wodehouse*

Neither Christ nor Buddha nor Socrates wrote a book, for to do so is to exchange life for a logical process.
*- William Butler Yeats*

A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.
*- Marguerite Yourcenar*

A drama critic is a person who surprises a writer by informing him what he meant.
*~ Wilson Mizner*

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armour and attacked a hot fudge sunday.
*~ Kurt Vonnegut*

There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rules by which the young writer may steer his course. He will often find himself steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.
- E. B. White

Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.
Trust your demon.
- Roger Zelazny

One of my standard -- and fairly true -- responses to the question as to how story ideas come to me is that story ideas only come to me for short stories. With longer fiction, it is a character (or characters) coming to visit, and I am then obliged to collaborate with him/her/it/them in creating the story.
- Roger Zelazny


And my favorites....

One of the most feared expressions in modern times is "The computer is down."
*~ Norman Augustine*

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
*~E.L. Doctorow*

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
*~ Peter De Vries*

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug.
*~ Mark Twain*

Fantasy doesn't have to be fantastic. American writers in particular find this much harder to grasp. You need to have your feet on the ground as much as your head in the clouds. The cute dragon that sits on your shoulder also craps all down your back, but this makes it more interesting because it gives it an added dimension.
*- Terry Pratchett*



Okay, that's enough quotes.

I'm sophomore at Florida State University, Creative Writing Major of course, with a possibility of double majoring Spanish. I love writing in all forms, and though I seem to have more of a talent for the general longer stories, I still love poetry equally. As a matter of fact, that's what this place is for, now isn't it?

I'm also quite happy to say that one of my favorite poets on this forum, Haran, has successfully published a book of poetry after a long time of waiting!

Check her out here, and admire her work! It's absolutely wonderful!

allpoetry.com/Poets/Whispering%20Mirage A link to her book on Amazon.com

allpoetry.com/poets/Haran Her author's page.