Amateur Writing Quotes

Another difference between amateur and professional writers, almost by definition, is that the latter more successfully engage their audience. It is partly a question of skill, but more often a matter of goals. Amateur writers tend to write primarily for self-expression, whereas writers able to become professional can hide or transform their own agendas enough so that they are of interest to others. Is this position the same as Freud's famous dictum that artists take unacceptable drives and present them in an acceptable way? ~ Alice W. Flaherty

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

The goal of my life is to tie adventure to my feet, stock memories in my pocket, hold imagination in my palms like fairy dust and sprinkle it on my tales. ~ Mitali Meelan

Clicking on "send" has its limitations as a system of subtle communication. Which is why, of course, people use so many dashes and italics and capitals ("I AM joking!") to compensate. That's why they came up with the emoticon, too - the emoticon being the greatest (or most desperate, depending how you look at it) advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of Charlemagne.

You will know all about emoticons. Emoticons are the proper name for smileys. And a smiley is, famously, this:

: - )

Forget the idea of selecting the right words in the right order and channelling the reader's attention by means of artful pointing. Just add the right emoticon to your email and everyone will know what self-expressive effect you thought you kind-of had in mind. Anyone interested in punctuation has a dual reason to feel aggrieved about smileys, because not only are they a paltry substitute for expressing oneself properly; they are also designed by people who evidently thought the punctuation marks on the standard keyboard cried out for an ornamental function. What's this dot-on-top-of-a-dot thing for? What earthly good is it? Well, if you look at it sideways, it could be a pair of eyes. What's this curvy thing for? It's a mouth, look! Hey, I think we're on to something.

: - (

Now it's sad!

; - )

It looks like it's winking!

: - r

It looks like it's sticking its tongue out! The perm ~ Lynne Truss

Writing constantly is the best tonic to jealousy I've found. ~ L. E. Henderson

Television is a new, hard test of our wisdom. If we succeed in mastering the new medium it will enrich us. But it can also put our mind to sleep. We must not forget that in the past the inability to transport immediate experience and to convey it to others made the use of language necessary and thus compelled the human mind to develop concepts. For in order to describe things one must draw the general from the specific; one must select, compare, think. When communication can be achieved by pointing with the finger, however, the mouth grows silent, the writing hand stops, and the mind shrinks. ~ Rudolf Arnheim

She used to write all the time,' Elizabeth explained, 'before she lost all that weight. Remember? When she was the butt of everyone's jokes instead of the girl all the boys want to date? ~ Francine Pascal

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost - the lost valleys of the imagination. ~ Alexander Cockburn

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk-away from any open flames-to remind yourself that if you don't write daily, you will get rusty. ~ George Singleton

Since I tend to write chronologically, the middle is always the place where the process is most taxing. ~ Robert Paul Weston

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays. ~ Karl Kraus

I am married to a writer, and this - writing - is an odd enterprise. It's something we both support very strongly. ~ Siri Hustvedt

It feels amazing to work with writers that write really well. ~ Giancarlo Esposito

I tend to write longer narrative pieces after I've finished writing a novel - when the fiction's finished and put away, and I have a chance to take all the ideas that are buried inside of my novels and work with them directly. ~ Dinaw Mengestu

I've discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at all leads to nothing. ~ Anna Quindlen

Music, for me, is completely self-indulgent. I write it, I play the instruments, I arrange it, I produce it. It's all about me - as it should be. ~ Lenny Kravitz

I'd never imagined myself writing at all until I was almost 30. And horror films weren't to my taste, at least the super popular (slasher-y) ones of the day back then. The first novel I ever loved as a kid was Frankenstein, and I was always a crazy Hitchcock and Polanski fan ... but I never saw myself - a square spazzy girl from the suburbs - writing anything that would horrify anyone. Or so I thought ... ~ Karen Walton

When I saw them on the beach, perfectly tanned, or when I watched them twirling in the waves, I grasped the transcendental element in surf music. It was all about freedom from the rules of life, the whole of your being concentrated in the act of shooting the tube. For several years after that trip to L.A. I subscribed to Surfer magazine, and I practiced the Atlantic Ocean version of the sport, though only with my body and on rather tame waves. With my voice muffled by the water I would shout a line from "Surf City." To me, this was the ultimate fantasy of plenty: "two girls for every boy," except I sang it as "Two girls for every goy." Fortunately, Brian has survived the schizoid tendencies that seemed close to the surface when I met him. He's still performing and writing songs. But it was his emotional battle and the intersection of that struggle with the acid-dosed aesthetic of the sixties that produced his most astonishing music. ~ Richard Goldstein

Songwriting is Hell on Earth. If it isn't, then you're doing it wrong. ~ Jimmy Webb

I am writing My Life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding. ~ Giacomo Casanova

I've always loved books. I was an avid reader, with any number of my own stories rolling around in my head. Writing them down seemed a logical step. ~ Kat Martin

Everything I've learned about art was (a) because I was actually interested, or (b) I was actually interested in covering my ass because of what I was writing about. ~ Peter Schjeldahl

I like looking back at art-work or my writing and seeing it in a different perspective...It shows how much one has grown as a creator. Perfection may not exist in reality but I always strive to capture the beauty in whatever I happen to be doing. ~ Alexander Lloyd Curran

It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides. ~ Charles Dickens

Lord, how tired one gets of one's own writing. ~ Virginia Woolf

My pragmatic nature, my impatience, will most likely have me drunk on aged spirit by noon. ~ S.A. Tawks

I remember when my daughter was twelve, suddenly a boy started hanging out in front of our house after school. It was this kid, Justin. My office at the time was right in the front, so I just looked out the window. I couldn't write. I couldn't concentrate. I was like, "What are you doing? What do you expect to achieve by standing in front of my house with my daughter inside?" I hated that kid so much. ~ Cinco Paul

Books are like horcruxes
without all the evil
because a piece of the author goes into each one. ~ Ella J. Fraser

The best part of having your dreams come true is you get to make new ones! ~ Jaimie Engle

Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands. ~ Brenda Ueland

Usually if you read a screenplay, no matter who's writing it, the bad guy is always written as a one-dimensional bad guy. ~ Mickey Rourke

I use a lot of humor in my writing. But it's completely black humor. ~ Kurt Vile

I find that writing is a constant battle with exactly the same problems you've always had. ~ Douglas Adams

Nonfiction is at its best an act of putting the world back together - or tearing some piece of it apart to find what's hidden beneath the assumptions or conventions - and in this sense creation and destruction can be akin. The process can be incandescent with excitement, whether from finding some unexpected scrap of information or from recognizing the patterns that begin to arise as the fragments begin to assemble. Something you didn't know well comes into focus, and the world makes sense in a new way, or an old assumption is gutted, and then you try to write it down. ~ Rebecca Solnit