- Write. Now. Go.
- Don't think. Scribble. Scribble. Scribble. Type so hard you bruise the screen.
- Now think.
- Revise. Revise. Revise. Cut. Cut. Cut. Rewrite. It is the sweat of craft.
- Don't always know what your images mean.
- Do always know what your sentences mean.
- Do not wait for inspiration. Go out and hunt it. Seduce it. Pin it down and dribble spit on its forehead until it cracks your leg bone and renames you.
- Writing takes time. Don't find the time to write. Make the time. If necessary, abandon sleep, people, television and drink.
- Treat writing like a hobby and you will receive nothing but the fruits of a hobby. It's a vocation. Honor it as such.
- Don't say you're trying to be a writer. If you're writing then you are a writer. Publication is nice, but has nothing to do with the definition.
- Love rejection. In letters, in criticism, in sales. Rejection is evidence you are in the game. If you're striking out, it means you got up to bat.
- Drink and talk with those that write and create, but never mistake talking about writing for actual writing.
- Love solitude.
- Celebrate arrogance. You're calling yourself a writer, for godsake. Embrace it.
- A person can only read so many words in a lifetime. Your reader is choosing to read you instead of Shakespeare, Hemingway, Whitman. Humbly honor that and give them the best of your soul.
- Do not write from answers. Write from questions. Discover more questions. Our work is not to explain the mystery, but to expand it.
- The craft of the sentence is important. But a perfectly crafted sentence with no passion is a well-dressed corpse. More fun to dance with a beggar than kiss a corpse.
- For a writer, the Internet is more dangerous than whisky.
- Whisky is pretty dangerous, too.
- Write what you know is bullshit. Reach beyond what you know, grasp for what is beyond your reach.
- The best fiction is magnificent failures. So fail magnificently.
- If your story isn't worth telling a stranger in a bar, it's not worth writing.
- In life many of us aim to avoid conflict. In fiction, we force enemies into a room with no doors.
- Laugh out loud at your own written words. Even in public... Especially in public.
- If you discover nothing while writing, don't expect your reader to.
- Dream onto the page. I mean dream in every sense of the word. Wishing. Fantasizing. And the unconscious game of your unthought thoughts bubbling into fragmented memories and shaping a narrative with elements of your life, but in a completely unexpected order and relationship.
- Live well. If your life is dull, it will seep into your pages like a stench. Take long walks. Get lost. Read. Read. Look foolish. Kiss people on the mouth.
- If you write because you believe the world needs you, you'll soon discover we don't. If you write because you are so naturally talented you must, you'll soon discover you are not. If you write for money... I'm chuckling at you. None of these reasons will sustain you. Listen. Are you called to write? Then write.
- You are going to die. So are all your readers. Let this inform every story you write.
- Writing is both holy and meaningless. That's all the pressure and freedom you need.
Honestly, I think that this is worth sharing more than anything else at this moment. Writing is one of the most beautiful art forms ever created. Writers are some of the most beautiful beings in the universe. A writer does things that no one else is able to do on a daily basis, and if not on a daily basis, then when they make time to do such things. They can take words and place them together to mean things that we never thought would be possible.
Words can move you. Would words be anything without the author behind them? Would words really be valuable if they were not stringed together to make a coherent thought?
I do not know. I cannot answer you.
What I do know, though, is that I am immensely proud to be a writer.
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