Writing Courses Quotes

IN MY SO-CALLED CAREER, I'VE OFTEN WRITTEN THINGS THAT I VAINLY THOUGHT WERE INCREDIBLY GOOD AND THAT I ENJOYED READING SO MUCH I FIGURED EVERYBODY ELSE WOULD ENJOY THEM TOO, AND MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, I HAVE BEEN TOTALLY WRONG … I never stopped being surprised that so many critics were uninterested in them, or dismissive, or even hostile. often they tried to point out the allegorical failures of the pieces, even when they were clearly as non-allegorical as they could get. and more than a couple of times, I received emails from somebody asking me what happened, why didn't I write the stories I used to write, and why did I get into all this 'animal rights' nonsense? I guess they thought I was picketing outside university research facilities. I consider all my stories and novels to be animal stories … I never understood why people took MFA degrees, or creative writing courses, and I avoided taking them myself for many years … honestly, I can't imagine why anybody would want to go through the pain and agony of having his work critiqued in an open forum - I tell my creative writing students this all the time, they are all far braver than I am! ~ Scott Bradfield

I was unhappy and I couldn't figure out what was the matter. And he told me to go take a writing course. And I didn't even know that one could learn to write in writing courses. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell

There are too many "creative writing" courses and seminars, in which young wirters are constantly being taught to rewrite the previous generation. They should be experimenting on their own. Every writer faces different problems which he must solve for himself. ~ John Dos Passos

Those who would like to become writers attend courses on writing poetry and prose and analyze their own work and that of other writers in development. Teachers teach them that talent is not required and that anyone, who wants to be a writer, can do it if they only master the technique of writing and master the formulas of the genre that they choose. With a little brain storming ideas written on cards, as well as designs and plans on the table, one can even write a novel in a month. There is no secret; the whole secret is in the technique, a little research, and the rest is solved by form, according to a formula, in which it is all nicely wrapped up and packaged.
And so, a bestseller is born. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Deliberately or not, every author is of course present in every book he or she writes - even in a scientific text. ~ Abraham Pais

I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years. ~ Jennifer Weiner

I think you have to learn for yourself how to write. I'm slightly mystified by creative writing courses - God love them - because I can't understand how you can explain a process that I find so baffling. ~ Kate Atkinson

I went to college, though I didn't take many writing courses. ~ Walter Jon Williams

There are many writing courses, there's plenty of demand for them. The shortage is having something to write about, and that can't be taught in schools. There is no course in finding something to write about.
Many beginners lacked something as fundamental as experience of life. It's a postmodern misconception that you can write first and live later. But many young people want to become writers because they want to live like writers. This is putting the cart before the horse. You must live first, and then decide if you have something to say afterwards. Life itself is a determining factor. Writing is the fruit of life. Life isn't the fruit of writing. ~ Jostein Gaarder

I teach writing courses and first of all, I teach my students what prosody is. ~ Theodore Sturgeon

I took a lot of writing courses. ~ Danny Strong

I hated the culture [working in the bank], I hated the work. I very quickly realized that this wasn't what I wanted to do. So, after two years, I took some writing courses - I always loved to write - and I figured the only way I was going to get paid to write was in journalism. ~ Sharif Abdel Kouddous

I was an avid reader, but never thought seriously about writing a novel until I was in my thirties. I took no formal fiction-writing courses and never thought about these categories when I wrote my first novel. ~ M.J. Rose

Good writing of course requires talent, and no one can teach you to have talent. ~ Peter Carey

One of the unfortunate things about creative writing courses is that they make people impatient. People feel that they have prepared themselves and that they must now do it. In fact there are positive incentives for doing so - universities are offering degrees for writing novels. ~ Robert Dessaix

A lot of novelists start late - Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter. ~ James M. Cain

Some writing courses will advise you to write what you know. I've always thought this is very odd advice ... because it means, for example, that I should not be writing about Nicholas Flamel, because I didn't live in France in the 15th Century, I was not an alchemyst, am not immortal (despite the rumours) and do not know magic. ~ Michael Scott

Of course, each of us has to write our own book, live our own life. ~ Thomas L. Dumm

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually. ~ Ben Fountain

Right now-whether you're in writing courses getting "paid" in credit for writing, or burdened and distracted by earning a living and changing diapers-figure out how to make writing an integral part of your life. Publication is good, and gives you the courage to go on, but publication is not as important as the act of writing. ~ Janet Burroway

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it. ~ Karl Marx

Show, don't tell, is a mantra repeated by tutors of creative writing courses the world over. As advice for amateurs, it is sound and helps avoid character profiling, unactivated scenes, and broken narrative frames. ~ Sarah Hall

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Don't be afraid to write. I think a lot of writers of all ages have a fear that they aren't any good at writing. That fear is normal. I feel it. Most writers who care about what they are writing feel it. When you feel like you're not good enough, write anyway. It's just a pesky bug that's whispering lies. The best way to swat the bug is with your pen. ~ Tanya Anderson

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death. ~ Edna Ferber

The mixture of the oral and the written traditions in the writings of Plato enabled him to dominate the history of the West. ~ Harold Innis

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader. ~ Maya Angelou

As long as music survives, poetry will never die. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Writing music and lyrics that mean something personal to me. It's an exciting, intense, cathartic, this-is-who-I-am experience. ~ Mark Hoppus

My general impression about people like Steve Gould and Carl Sagan and so on is that when they disappear as individuals and are no longer appearing on the stage and they are no longer writing, that their lifetime of acknowledgement by the general reading public is not very long.There were many people in the 19th century who were equally famous people who gave working man's lectures, supporters of Darwin, we as scholars know their names but the general public never heard of them. ~ Richard Lewontin

Writers, that deep dark secret is not something you should hide from the world. It is your gift. Take it from memory and illuminate it in literature,shake the dust from it, unless it will get you arrested, lol. ~ Kevin R. Hill

I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. ~ Elmore Leonard

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer. ~ Jon Krakauer

I hate writing, I hate pens and paper and all that fussiness. I have done well enough without it too, I think. Oh, I am lying to myself. I have feared writing. But books have saved me sometimes, that is the truth - my Samaritans. ~ Sebastian Barry

In 1970 the top three skills required by the Fortune 500 were the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1999 the top three skills in demand were teamwork, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. We need schools that are developing these skills. ~ Linda Darling-Hammond

Maria? ... She's been writing all this down? Oh, bless her ... ' He leafed on through the pile. 'Although that's not how that happened ... and no, she's wrong, bowties are cool. ~ James Goss

I expect that in 40 years' time I'll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam. ~ Toby Young

A major feature of life at the NIH in late 1960s was the extraordinary offering of evening courses for physicians attempting to become scientists as they neared thirty. ~ Harold E. Varmus

If Mozart were around now he would write a killer rock song. ~ Vanessa Carlton

We are innately creative beings capable of writing a love story worth living, and we cannot afford to miss out on the opportunity to experience nourishing relationships. ~ David Simon

Megan could have kissed him. If there weren't a million obstacles, both physical and psychological, in her way, of course. ~ Kate Brian

O, it ended in my having nothing to say, when I sat down to write. But sometimes, when I get hold of a book, I wonder why I let such a poor reason stop me. It does not others. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it. ~ Noel Coward

My great joy is to give form to reality. Music is a great release, a great enjoyment to me. Eventually I'd like to write something of great importance. That's my ambition-to write something worthwhile. ~ Jim Morrison

Stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving a rough edge for you to start from the nest day - that way, you can write three or five words without being "creative" and before you know it, you're writing. ~ Cory Doctorow

I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story it will be common, though it be singular it will be known to you so that by the end you will think - no, you will realize - that it was all the while yourself arranging the words, that it was all the time words that you yourself, out of your heart had been saying. ~ Mary Oliver

I actually enjoy writing longer books because you have even more to get your storytelling teeth into. ~ Stephen Cole

I don't wait for inspiration. I get up and write every day. ~ Cathy Marie Buchanan

A lot of the things that involve power on the highest levels sometimes involve the darker side of human psychology. People can be very passive aggressive or they can be aggressive and they can conceal their intentions. There's this world that exists that nobody writes about or describes it's like a dirty little secret or taboo. ~ Robert Greene

Books measure time in both moments and years.
We all grow old but the stories never will. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

Beware of the compound adjective, beloved of the tyro and the 'poetess'. ~ Ambrose Bierce

There is a problem in America. An Irish or Polish American can write a story and it's an American story. When a Black American writes a story, it's called a Black story. I take exception to that. Every artist has articulated to his own experience. The problem is that some people do not see Blacks as Americans. ~ Gloria Naylor

A friend of mine has a daughter who . . . . was constantly writing home for more money. . . . At one point . . . the daughter explained, "But dad, I can tell you where every penny you have sent me has been spent."

He replied, "You don't seem to get the point. I'm interested in a budget--a plan for spending--not in a diary of where the money has gone."

Perhaps parents should be more like the father of the college boy who wired home, "No mon, no fun, your son." His father wired back, "How sad, too bad, your dad. ~ N. Eldon Tanner

I'm not proselytizing my method. I don't believe that one writer should tell other writers how to write. ~ John Irving

People in Israel would write in a high register, they wouldn't write colloquial speech. I do a special take on colloquial speech. When I started writing, I thought [the language] was telling the story of this country: old people in a young nation, very religious, very conservative, very tight-assed, but also very anarchistic, very open-minded. It's all in the language, and that's one thing that doesn't translate. ~ Etgar Keret

If you wait for inspiration to write you're not a writer, you're a waiter. ~ Dan Poynter

As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall. ~ Virginia Woolf

I am co-writing a screenplay now and I'm working on the rights to another story I want to do. So I plan to produce and direct. So, for me, I don't really feel that I am vulnerable to that sad baggage that comes with the business of filmmaking. ~ Kerry Washington

I will deny I ever said this, of course, but the gods need heroes. They always have. Otherwise we would not keep you annoying little brats around.
I feel so wanted. Thanks. ~ Rick Riordan

The craft, the writing of a song, is about creating a story, a life story, a world within three minutes, but that's the frame, if you like, the picture frame. That fascinates me. ~ PJ Harvey

There are two kinds of people in boxing. Those who say, 'Oh, boy; Tom Hauser is writing an article about me,' and those who say, 'Big problem; Tom Hauser is writing an article about me.' ~ Jim Lampley