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Writer's Notes - By Jeanne Dininni

WritersNotes.Net: Helping Writers Follow Their Dreams Through Information, Inspiration, and Encouragement!


Update: Just noticed that the link I posted to Pat Schneider's book on Questia was mysteriously transformed into a link that took one elsewhere on the Questia site. Tried posting another link, but apparently links at Questia must either be time-dependent or based on the number of visits the link receives: In other words, after a period of time, they expire. My apologies!

I've decided, instead to post a link to the Questia home page, where you'll be able to locate the book by typing or pasting the book's title into the search bar (in quotes) or by using the following category info: Under Subject Categories, click Education > Arts and Humanities Education (under Curriculum and Instruction) > Creative Writing > Writing Alone and With Others. Sorry for the convoluted way you'll have to access the book! That's entirely Questia's doing. I think you'll find it well worth the effort, though! Thanks for your patience!




A Wealth of Wisdom for Writers

In her book, Writing Alone and With Others (Oxford University Press, 2003), author and speaker Pat Schneider offers a great deal of wisdom to writers. The following are a few quotes that I hope will resonate with you, touching areas of fear or doubt, insecurity or confusion that you may be experiencing in your own writing journey. We all experience these moments of uncertainty now and then, whether we write professionally, share our musings with others for free, or pour our hearts and souls into written works intended for our eyes alone.


Sample the Book at Questia

You'll be able to read a generous sampling of pages from Schneider's book for free right on the Questia website, by visiting the following link: Questia and typing (or pasting) the book's title into the search bar (in quotes). (To search via Questia's categories, see my instructions in the Update at the beginning of this post.) You'll find a good selection of her words of wisdom for writers posted there, so that you can decide whether purchasing her book or e-book might prove worth your while. Even if you decide not to buy it (I'll be honest: I haven't bought it yet, though I'm considering doing so), at least you'll enjoy the benefit of the encouragement, inspiration, insight, and incredibly practical advice she offers in the excerpts available at Questia.


Where is the Book Available?

In case you'd like to purchase it, here are a few places the book is available (as of this writing):

Writer's Notes Writer's Resource Store (paperback)*

Amazon (paperback)

Amazon (Kindle edition)

Barnes & Noble (paperback)

Barnes & Noble (e-book)


The Quotes

Now, without further ado, a few sage Pat Schneider quotes that I hope you'll love as much as I do:

There are so many voices within us and outside us that discourage and undermine us, tempt us to abandon our own visions, our own voices, that a sense of duty, of 'ought and should' will not be sufficient to counter them. Each person must study him- or herself to understand the form that discipline needs to take. Surely the person who works well with a tight schedule of planned hours will want to work writing in the same way. The only way for me to lead a disciplined writing life, however, is to believe in myself as a writer and to love my work so much that nothing else—even 'those other commitments'—can take it away from me. (p.45)

Leading a disciplined writing life is not all about work. It is also about sleep. Entering and staying in the mysterious place where daydream meets night dream is important to the writing life. Our deepest writing, our genius, requires an engagement of the unconscious mind. (p.54)

I have come to understand, through my own writing and through working with other writers, that fear is a friend of the writer. Where there is fear, there is buried treasure. Something important lies hidden—something that matters—like the angel waiting in the stone that Michelangelo began to carve. (p.4)

The first step in becoming free of fear is to accept yourself as a writer. All writers deal with this problem. You are not alone. None of us creates ex nihilo (out of nothing). All writing involves self-revelation. Even if the actual facts of our lives are not revealed, we cannot escape the fact that writing reveals the ways our minds work. All writing is, at least, an auto-biography of the imagination. (p.11)

You are the landlord of your own soul. Let the words, the memories, the imaginings pour white-hot onto the page. You can decide later what they are, what they might become, and when it is time to show them to someone else. (p.13)

Whatever you do, don't stay in the never-never land of wanting and not doing. It will make your soul sick. If you want to write, claim for yourself what you need in order to learn, grow, practice. There is no other way to be an artist. (p.52)


Quotes Can Inspire Us to Achieve Our Dreams

Hopefully, this brief introduction to Pat Schneider's wise words will stir your writer's soul, planting a seed of passion that will compel you to develop your own unique voice, find your own special calling, niche, or purpose -- or further refine it until it truly expresses the essence of who you are as a writer, thinker, and person.

My hope is that these writing quotes will serve to spark your imagination, broadening your mind to new possibilities, inspiring new hope, and prompting extravagant dreams that you may never have even entertained before today -- bringing with them the firm belief that you are perfectly capable of achieving them!


May all your writing dreams come true!
Jeanne


*You'll also find a link to my Writer's Resource Store in my left sidebar.



What are your thoughts on the topics Pat Schneider discusses in the above quotes? Does any of her advice especially resonate with you? In what way?



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My Inspiration for this Post

While checking the current value of my blog over at Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog (the results of which I'll report in another post), I came across Dane's latest blog entry, posted earlier, which I found highly appropriate for writers/bloggers as we head into a new year. In his post, Dane shares 10 Golden Lessons from Albert Einstein. Check out the words of wisdom that Dane has chosen to share from the great store of sayings which originated in the mind of this great scientist and creative thinker.


Additional Gems of Einsteinian Wisdom

After reading Dane's post, I became inspired to search for additional Einstein quotes and was by no means disappointed. The following are some of the incredible words spoken by a man of great intelligence, a dedicated scientist and thinker, prolific in articulating his insights about life.


Albert's Advice for Writers to Take to Heart

The first group of five Einstein quotes offers excellent advice which, though not directed specifically at writers, is nonetheless applicable to our creative literary pursuits and every bit as much to our attempts to achieve success in our chosen discipline. Read and reap the benefits of some of the potent life lessons learned by Einstein during his many years of intellectual inquiry:

1. "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."

2. “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”

3. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

4. “We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”

5. “Never regard your study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.”


More Einsteinian Truths to Inspire Us

The additional 21 Einsteinian gems of wisdom which follow can further inspire us to reach the heights of our own personal creativity, imagination, idealism, and intellect. No doubt certain of these sayings will resonate with each of us more than others will; but all seem to me to have great significance for those of us who seek to express ourselves through our literary endeavors. Which of them have special meaning for you?

1. “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

2. “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

3. “Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.”

4. “Information is not knowledge.”

5. “Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.”

6. “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

7. “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.”

8. “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”

9. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

10. “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”

11. “The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

12. “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

13. “There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.”

14. “To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”

15. “True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.”

16. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

17. "It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."

18. “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

19. “Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.”

20. “People do not grow old no matter how long we live. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.”

21. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”


Not All, But Enough for Now

The above are by no means all the Einstein quotes I've collected during my fascinating foray into the mind of this intellectual giant; yet, they are enough, I think, to stimulate our minds, hearts, and imaginations for the moment. Even these are quite a lot to absorb at one sitting and will likely require rereading a time or two for lasting impact; so I'll stop here to allow them sufficient time to sink in and save the rest for a later post.

Hopefully, these quotes have been a source of inspiration to you and will continue to resonate with you as you look forward to another year of reading, thinking, learning, feeling, and sharing with your readers all that you discover and absorb in the year ahead.

Happy learning--and writing!
Jeanne



Did you enjoy this post? Have anything to share about the above quotes or the creative process or any additional words of wisdom you've come across in your own intellectual travels? We'd love to hear from you!



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Here they are--just in time for Mother's Day! Some more-or-less contemporary quotes about that great vocation (not to be confused with great vacation!): Motherhood!

Motherhood in all its guises and permutations is more art than science. ~Melinda M. Marshall~

Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. ~Erma Bombeck~

We honor motherhood with glowing sentimentality, but we don't rate it high on the scale of creative occupations. ~Leontine Young~

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute. ~Honore De Balzac~

The central paradox of motherhood is that while our children become the absolute center of our lives, they must also push us back out in the world.... But motherhood that can narrow our lives can also broaden them. It can make us focus intensely on the moment and invest heavily in the future. ~Ellen Goodman~

Combining paid employment with marriage and motherhood creates safeguards for emotional well-being. Nothing is certain in life, but generally the chances of happiness are greater if one has multiple areas of interest and involvement. To juggle is to diminish the risk of depression, anxiety, and unhappiness. ~Faye J. Crosby~

Of all the haunting moments of motherhood, few rank with hearing your own words come out of your daughter’s mouth. ~Victoria Secunda~

The most consistent gift and burden of motherhood is advice. ~Susan Chira~

The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings. ~Honore De Balzac~

The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and torturous, involving and utterly tedious, all at the same time. The world is full of women made to feel strange because what everyone assumes comes naturally is so difficult to do—never mind to do well. ~Anna Quindlen~

The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities. ~Jessie Bernard~

When you reach the end of your rope, don't add guilt to your frustration. No one said motherhood was going to be easy. ~Heather King~

Happy Mother's Day to Mothers Everywhere!


Your Creative Cohort,
Jeanne



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Here are a few more quotes by writers on writing. Some are thought-provoking, some brutally honest, some inspiring, and some simply clever--but whatever your thinking about the art or the craft, you should find something here that will catch your fancy!

Here goes:

There is only one trait that marks the writer. He is always watching. It's a kind of trick of mind and he is born with it. ~Morley Callaghan~

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book. ~Mickey Spillane~

Autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing. ~Quentin Crisp~

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can only be a footnote. ~Yevgeny Yevtushenko~

Books are...funny little portable pieces of thought. ~Susan Sontag~

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more books than he has read. ~Samuel Johnson~

Journalism is literature in a hurry. ~Matthew Arnold~

Literature is the question minus the answer. ~Roland Barthes~

Literature is recognizable through its capacity to evoke more than it says. ~Anthony Burgess~

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. ~G.K. Chesterton~

To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession. ~Robert Graves~

The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born. ~W.H. Auden~

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. ~Robert Frost~

It's easier to write a mediocre poem than to understand a good one. ~Montaigne~

In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind. ~Marianne Moore~

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...in a man who has thought long and deeply. ~William Wordsworth~

You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place--you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter. ~Bernard Malamud~

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark. ~Henry David Thoreau~

When I stop (working), the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm working. ~Tennessee Williams~

Words are loaded pistols. ~Jean-Paul Sartre~

Words are like leaves, and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. ~Alexander Pope~

All the fun's in how you say a thing. ~Robert Frost~

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne~

I do not understand this chronic illness. I wish I had gone to law school. ~Darryl Pinckney~

The best time for planning a book is when you're doing the dishes. ~Agatha Christie~

I talk out the lines as I write. ~Tennessee Williams~

If I could, I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results. ~Emily Bronte~

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers. ~Irvin S. Cobb~

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. ~E. L. Doctorow~



Hope a few of these provocative thoughts have set your own creative juices flowing!


Happy writing!
Jeanne



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Writers, as a rule, tend to have a great deal to say about many subjects--and writing is no exception. Here are a few pearls of wisdom on the writing craft from some of history's most prolific authors:


There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Red Smith~

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. ~Samuel Johnson~

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. That is too much of a temptation to the editor. ~Ring Lardner~

Writing is a wholetime job: no professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it. ~W. Somerset Maugham~

The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain WHATSOEVER on his habitually slack attention. ~Ezra Pound~

Better to write for yourself and have no public than write for the public and have no self. ~Cyril Connolly~

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by people who move their lips when they're reading to themselves. ~Don Marquis~

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give to your style. ~Sydney Smith~

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. ~Henry David Thoreau~

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers. ~H.L. Mencken~

You can write about anything, and if you write well enough, even the reader with no intrinsic interest in the subject will become involved. ~Tracy Kidder~

The wastepaper basket is the writer's best friend. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer~

When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it's going to be till I'm under way. I trust inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day. ~Alberto Moravia~

It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them. ~T. S. Eliot~

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

The secret of good writing is to say an old thing a new way or to say a new thing an old way. ~Richard Harding Davis~



Well, dear Aspiring Writer, now that you've read all this practical advice, all these clever witticisms, and all these words of inspiration penned by wordsmiths who have actually accomplished what you may only dream of, there's only one thing left for you to do if you'd like to join their ranks: WRITE!


Literarily Yours,
Jeanne



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