This blog is over...

Well, not exactly over, just shifting to another blog...My Writing Mentor! You'll still find great quotes to inspire your writing, but you'll also find a little bit more...

Do you ever wish you had a writing mentor?

Someone to give you advice, answer your questions, and prod you on?

My Writing Mentor consists of tips, helps, and answers for finding success in the publishing world.

My Writing Mentor will also answer your questions ... or find someone who can. Simply leave your questions in the comment field of any post and watch for the answer in upcoming issues. Newsletters will be sent out the 1st and 15th of every month.

Check it out at http://mywritingmentor.blogspot.com

Someone long dead...

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone long dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

~~Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)

Imitation

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

~~Francois Rene Chateaubriand

Homework...

Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of yourlife.

~~Lawrence Kasdan, screenwriter, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back

So much further on...

Another one from Lewis...

"What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn't matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it's thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on."

~~C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves

You know you're a writer when...

You know you're a writer when you receive a clothing catalog and immediately scan the models' faces to see if they match a character in your wip instead of looking at the clothes.

~~Vickie McDonough
www.vickiemcdonough.com

"Write Away"...

Lynnette Horner sent me several good quotes from mystery author Elizabeth George's book "Write Away":

"You will be published if you possess three qualities - talent, passion, and discipline. You will probably be published if you possess two of the three qualities in either combination - either talent and discipline, or passion and discipline. You will likely be published if you possess neither talent nor passion but still have discipline. Just go to the bookstore and pick up a few 'notable' titles and you'll see what I mean. But if all you possess is talent or passion, if all you possess is talent and passion, you will not be published. The likelihood is you will never be published. And if by some miracle you are published, it will probably never happen again." - p253

"A lot of writing is simply showing up. A lot of writing is being willing to show up day after day, same time and same place. A lot of writing is being able to put the work first simply because it is the work. A lot of writing is being able to delay gratification." - p254

"Authors are those guys who hope to get rich quick with a big sale to a big publisher followed by a lucrative movie deal. They write the same novel over and over and they declare at the beginning of their careers that if they don't get published, they'll give it up. Writers, on the other hand, are those guys who'd write anyway. They have to breathe, after all. They have to live." - p254

Amen!

"The author who benefits you most is not one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has beendumbly struggling for existence."

~~Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

But for Grace...

Lynnette Horner sent this C.S. Lewis quote to me that she has framed on her desk!

Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him."

~~C.S. Lewis in "The Great Divorce

WOW...now there is a thought provoking statement if there ever was one!

Regular and ordinary...

"Be regular and ordinary in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work."

~~Flaubert

Luck? Chance?

I got this great quote from Jenny Carlisle http://www.shoutlife.com/jennymcc

She says, Here's a quote I saw in an entertainment news story about Will Smith(Fresh Prince, Men In Black, The Pursuit of Happiness, etc.) back in December. I haven't seen it repeated much, but I think it's great. It spoke to my tendency to sit back and wait until someone "discovers" me.

"What we call luck, what we call chance, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. If you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready."

~~Will Smith

Familiar...

Writer Peg Phifer sent this quote to me:

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new."

~~Samuel Johnson

Write what you love...

"Forget 'write what you know.' Whether it's something you know or not, the very next book you need to write is the book that you have been longing to read for years, but have not read because it does not yet exist. Write that book. Make it your mission to fill that hole in the body of literature. Write what you love."

~~Tom Morrisey


Well said Tom!

Staring...

Tom Morrisey sent me this one...

"What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window."

~~Burton Rascoe

Advice from Ernest...

"Don't get discouraged because there's a lot of mechanical work to writing...I rewrote the first part of Farewell to Arms at least fifty times."

~~Ernest Hemingway

Holding hands...

My friend Elece Hollis sent this to as a good thing to remember if you want your writing to flow smoothly. :

“Someone once said that in good writing, sentences hold hands.”


~~Patricia T. O’Conner’s book Woe is I

New...My Writing Mentor!

Hello all...

I wanted to let you know about a new resource for all you budding writers out there

check it out: http://mywritingmentor.blogspot.com/!

Make sure to sign up for the newsletter....and tell all your freinds!

Dream writing...

“How can one not dream while writing?”

~~Gaston Bachelard

Life and death...

“Life itself is a writer’s lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.”

~~Edna Ferber