Blogtations

How to tell when your writing career has completely stalled

How to tell when your writing career has completely stalled: You have started putting your byline on the grocery lists.

~Suburban Kamikaze

I love writing

I love writing. It's harder than breathing, but easier than doing the dishes.

~Writer Dad

The first rule of writing is to write small

The first rule of writing is to write small. Small, but not diminutive. If you want to write about love ... write about, spreading a blanket across the driveway at 7:30 a.m. to eat your breakfast of toasted pitas and raspberry jam, as your son winds his body inside the shape of your lap, and delights in the construction that is taking place across the street. Hammers and nails will be poetry for you then.

~Ordinary Art

I have to write

I have to write to find out if I have anything to write about.

~Can't Backspace

Dear Joseph Epstein

Dear Joseph Epstein,
I find myself wishing I sounded more like you write in my daily conversation, but my co-workers would be confused by the sudden improvement in vocabulary and wit and I promise not to try.

~I Heart Dewey Decimal

Writers, like children

Writers, like children, are not dissuaded by the uselessness of hoarded ordinaries; instead, we cultivate a collector's sense, trying to capture mundane moments on a string of words.

~Hoarded Ordinaries

I am a grammar Nazi

I am a grammar Nazi. For example, I'm known for zealously defending the objectivity of Objects of a Preposition against infringement by popular song. Keith Urban, Rascall Flatts, Paul McCartney -- I'm talking to you: nothing is "between you and I." So "me" doesn't fit the rhyming scheme...big deal. If you can't find an alternate word ending in long e, you have no business writing songs. Someday someone is going to be composing something for internet publication and have to ask himself (note, it is not "themselves") whether it should be "you and I" or "you and me." He's going to remember your song, and write the wrong phrase. It will be your fault. Better to have a millstone tied around your neck than to lead one of these little ones into grammatical debauchery.

~The Philosopher-Mom

Pencil stubs just disturb me.

~Two Boys, a Husband (a Cat, a Dog) and Me...

Here is the exquisite and terrible secret of the writer: That while the mind and heart are overwrought, the keen observer backs away and observes. And it is impossible not to think, at some point, "What can I use this for?"

~Katie Alender

It is amazing how much writing I can get done when I have housework to do. It is ASTOUNDING how much housework I can get done when I have a writing deadline.

~Sarah and the Goon Squad

My first novel would have been a much better book if I'd ever finished writing it.

~JLSHall

Anyone who said writing a book is a romantic endeavor is either a masochist or has never done it.

~The Daily Coyote

If your mother writes a story that vaguely (or exactly) resembles an actual story from your life and her writing class didn't like it, should that affect your self-esteem or hers?

~Chased by Children