Writing Takeaways & Quotes

We are headed into year three of blogging and I can’t help but remember where I’ve been as a writer, compare it to where I am now, and look at others wisdom in this area.

For one blogging has made me a better writer, I try to write tight and concise to save readers time without skimping on the needed information. Don’t be fooled, writing short is the hardest of all. Ask any poet or even the masters. It’s not for the feint of heart.

“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. -Ernest Hemingway in an Interview with Paris Review [spring 1958]

Secondly, I’ve made a lot of new friends along the way, writer friends and more. People who are encouraging and hold me accountable when I don’t really want to get up early (or stay up late) to write. Thank you for that word of encouragement, that follow, that like, it means so much.

“Is it so small a thing

To have enjoyed the sun,

To have lived light in the spring,

To have loved, to have thought, to have done;

To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?”

-Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna, II

I’ve also written more than I ever thought I could in these years. Not just the same book, new ones, some short others long. I’ve experimented with form. I’ve tried new genres sometimes on purpose and often by mistake. Not because I have to but because I want to it’s somewhere inside and has to get out.

“Fool!” said my muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.” -Sir Philip Sidney in Astrophel and Stella

And here I am again not just querying agents but also publishers. Deciding inside me that rejection is okay because it’s making me stronger and bringing me closer to the best match. I hope these musings and quotes will push you to never give up your dream.

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

-Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

Happy Questing!