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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