A Quote by Diana Abu-Jaber
The daily writing practice is something I used to hear batted around a lot in writing workshops - which is probably why I dropped out of all the writing workshops. I wish I could take credit for innovating a new approach to writing, but the truth is that I've managed to write books despite myself. I'm lazy and ungovernable and undisciplined, but I do have a lot of anxiety about never amounting to anything and ending up as a bag lady.
Related Quotes
Learn as much as you can. Take every opportunity to learn about writing, whether it’s through classes, workshops, whatever is available to you. This may be difficult, because things like classes, workshops, writing programs, require time and money. But I say this honestly and somewhat harshly – if you’re not willing to prioritize your writing, perhaps you should do something else?
I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history.
When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing, and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry.
With my students I give them lots and lots of guided writing. Part of it is as simple as writing a lot but not toward anything. The mind floats. Then I help them see where the language has heat. If we do this a lot in class, students eventually relax into this writing practice and enjoy it. Even just that - writing pleasure without the anxiety of "audience" or "grade" or "success" - is a kind of impetus toward the unfamiliar.
You've got to be a good reader. So whatever genre that you're interested in, read a lot of books about it and it's better than any kind of writing class you'll ever take. You will absorb techniques and then in a lot of cases you can just start writing using the style of the book or the author that you admire and then your own style will emerge out of that. Be a diligent reader and then try to write seriously, professionally and approach everything in writing in a professional way.
When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.
The writing workshops and programs that are everywhere have encouraged writing. And if that produces more writing, it's also producing more readers of an elevated level. So all in all, a good thing.
I'm open to writing just about anything. I love writing the books that I write. They do tend to be on dark subjects, but I don't think of myself necessarily as a dark-humored person. I like having a lot of fun.
And [now] I think I’ll probably write a lot about birds. My new house has a deck that wraps around my writing room; my writing room has many windows, and outside the windows I’ve hung bird feeders … for enticing different species. So I imagine I will be writing about that.
Write all the time. I believe in writing every day, at least a thousand words a day. We have a strange idea about writing: that it can be done, and done well, without a great deal of effort. Dancers practice every day, musicians practice every day, even when they are at the peak of their careers – especially then. Somehow, we don’t take writing as seriously. But writing – writing wonderfully – takes just as much dedication.
I use the music to vent, and a lot of the stuff that I am writing about or was writing about contained a lot of anger and anxiety, stress and depression, so that's how the album came out so dark.
When I'm writing, I'm writing for a particular actor. When a lot of writers are writing, they're writing an idea. So they're not really writing in a specific voice.
Every good story needs a complication. We learn this fiction-writing fundamental in courses and workshops, by reading a lot or, most painfully, through our own abandoned story drafts. After writing twenty pages about a harmonious family picnic, say, or a well-received rock concert, we discover that a story without a complication flounders, no matter how lovely the prose. A story needs a point of departure, a place from which the character can discover something, transform himself, realize a truth, reject a truth, right a wrong, make a mistake, come to terms.
I'm always writing. A friend of mine once said, 'You avoid re-writing by writing.' Which is kind of a good point, because re-writing seems to be mostly about craft, and writing is just, like, getting out your passion on a piece of paper.
I read my books to writing workshops and friends, and I'm often focussed just on keeping them entertained. I never think about marketing at all.
The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I'm in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That's my method.
Related Authors
Brian Tracy Quotes
American
Author
Cassandra Clare Quotes
American
Author
Frederick Lenz Quotes
American
Author
Henry David Thoreau Quotes
American
Author
J. K. Rowling Quotes
English
Author
Jodi Picoult Quotes
American
Author
John Green Quotes
American
Author
Joyce Meyer Quotes
American
Author
Marianne Williamson Quotes
American
Author
Neil Gaiman Quotes
British
Author
Richelle Mead Quotes
American
Author
Rick Riordan Quotes
American
Author
Robert Kiyosaki Quotes
American
Author
Stephen King Quotes
American
Author
Terry Pratchett Quotes
English
Author
Virginia Woolf Quotes
British
Author