Six Minute Story

If you want to write, read a lot, then write a lot. Write all the time… and never, ever worry if you’re bad. I’m bad every day. My first drafts are some rough road. You just have to not be afraid of sucking.

— 

Maureen Johnson via Shelf Awareness

(from bookish)

(via paperbackgirl)

I’ve never met a white writer who ever gets asked questions like, ‘Well, don’t you feel bad about the way you represent white people?’ Guys I’m not representing Dominicans, I’m representing one crazy set of like, what, 11 people? There’s like, what, 12 people in this book? There’s 10 million Dominicans, yo. I just happen to come from a family of crazy people and I think you should be allowed to write about crazy people.

— Junot Diaz. Everything he says is gold, always. (via paperbackgirl)

Public Radio Name Generator →

babesofnpr:

Always wanted to be a host on public radio but don’t have a name with the punch of Doualy Xaykaothao, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, or Daniel Zwerdling? Not to Worry! Enter your name and we will suggest a new public radio-friendly version.

We LOVE this.

Sincerely, Phoebe Anan-Munoz

Susan Sontag in a bear suit. Via

apoetreflects:

“You must become aware of the richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there, so that you can write [or create] opulently and with self-trust.  If you once become aware of it and have faith in it, you will be all right.”

—Brenda Ueland

The Writer

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Richard Wilbur, from The Mind-Reader (1976)

(via A Poet Reflects) 

It’s supposed to be hard

Jimmy Dugan: Shit, Dottie, if you want to go back to Oregon and make a hundred babies, great, I’m in no position to tell anyone how to live. But sneaking out like this, quitting, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Baseball is what gets inside you. It’s what lights you up, you can’t deny that. 

Dottie Hinson: It just got too hard. 

Jimmy Dugan: It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard… is what makes it great. 

(From “A League of Their Own”, reminded of this quote by this video on writing by Jackson Pearce)  

“Ojibwemowin is also a language of emotions; shades of feeling can be mixed like paints… Ozozamenimaa pertains to a misuse of one’s talents getting out of control. Ozozamichige implies you can still set things right. There are many more kinds of love than there are in English.” 

Louise Erdrich on loving and learning Ojibwe, the language of her maternal grandfather.

(Source: cornonmacabre, via afternoonsnoozebutton)

Very few people can write in a crowd. This is a very solitary occupation. I have known people more talented than me who never made it. And the primary reason was always that they couldn’t stand to be alone for several hours a day.

— Tom Robbins