A Quote by Alan Lightman

For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most useful.

Alan Lightman

Quote Topics

Class Contemporary Contemporary Literature Craft Learn Literature Most Students Trying Useful Writing

Quote Author

Alan Lightman
American - Physicist
Born: November 28, 1948

The most important advice I can offer is that writing is a craft that you can learn by practicing. If you keep writing, you will improve.

Lauren Tarshis

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.

Dawn Lundy Martin

These days, most of my interactions with young people are centered on the poetry or theater classes I teach, so the students I know are reading contemporary poets (they love Willie Perdomo) and scripts (No Child, by Nilaja Sun and Twilight by Anna Deavere Smith). I don't know their reading habits outside of our class, but I believe that they enjoy stories that they can relate to, learn from, be challenged by - you know, the usual good writing that every reader craves.

Renee Watson

Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn't primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.

Stieg Larsson

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.

Cameron Crowe

I enjoyed writing in school. I don't know that I was all that good at it in school. I worked at it later. I feel comfortable writing now. I enjoy writing now. I suspect, like most college students, I viewed writing then to be more tedious.

Michael Hayden

There are as many routes to writing success as there are writers who got there. My advice, however, applies across the board: read widely, learn the craft by whatever means you can - workshops and writing programs are ideal, but even self-study can work - apply what you learn, and persevere.

Therese Fowler

I think most fiction writers naturally start by writing short stories, but some of us don't. When I first started writing, I just started writing a novel. It's a hard way to learn to write. I don't recommend it to my students, but it just happens that way for some of us.

Andrea Barrett

Read. Read. Read. Read many genres. Read good writing. Read bad writing and figure out the difference. Learn the craft of writing.

Carol Berg

Sinclair Lewis was asked one time to give a talk to class of students about writing. When he got there he asked the class, Do you people want to be writers?and they all said yes. Then Lewis said, Why the hell aren't you at home writing?

Tom T. Hall

Writing, at least a craft and at its best an art, aspiring to the unique, is the most difficult to learn.

Jacques Barzun

Mostly, I would like people to ask other writers about the craft of their writing so we could learn from one another. We ask movie directors why they chose to use certain lights and angles and speeds of film, but most of the time, we ignore the craft of a writer.

Alexandra Fuller

More than half of my former students teach - elementary and high school, community college and university. I taught them to be passionate about literature and writing, and to attempt to translate that passion to their own students. They are rookie teachers, most likely to be laid off and not rehired, even though they are passionate.

Susan Straight

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy.