You're not going to be a writer someday. You're a writer today. Discipline yourself to write and take time to enjoy writing. Do it a lot. Have fun with it. Begin now.
How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page?
I have a friend who is an excellent liar. His secret: Believe the lie yourself when you're telling it.
Writing is an act of hope. It means carving order out of chaos, of challenging one's own beliefs and assumptions, of facing the world with eyes and heart wide open. Through writing we declare a personal identity amid faceless anonymity. We find purpose and beauty and meaning even when the rational mind argues that none of these exist. Writing therefore, is also an act of courage. How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page?
Writing, therefore, is also an act of courage. How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page? How much easier is it to surrended to materialism or cynicism or to a hundred other ways of life that are, in fact, ways to hide from life and from our fears. When we write, we resist the facile seduction of theses simpler roads. We insist on finding out and declaring the truths that we find, and we dare to out those truths on the page.
The Talker needs attention. The Talker needs validation. The Talker would rather talk about an idea than confront the complexities, its obstacles. The Talker wants the glory but none of the hard work.
Walter Gropius
Bob Kerrey
Ivan Turgenev
Edward Victor Appleton
David Norwood
Thomas Haynes Bayly
Patrick Simmons
Julian of Norwich
Erin Heatherton
Herb Elliott
John H. Vincent
Matthew Zapruder
