Cheryl Van Eck
A beautiful quote from Ray Bradbury on writing:
“To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.
“You must write every single day of your life.
“You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.
“You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
“I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.
“I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.
“May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories – science fiction or otherwise.
“Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
Brenda Bensch
So you tell yourself, “If I could just get this one book/story/poem/play/screenplay written, I think I could really take off. I could really soar!” In other words, I could prove that I’m a “real” writer. I’ve wanted to do it for a long time. I’ve certainly taken writing classes, gone to workshops, joined writers groups. I’ve even written blogs. Lots of them. Mostly about writing. Now, “if I could JUST get this ONE . . .”
The next thoughts come: “I’ll never get this done. The story’s squirreling around in circles. I can’t even make sense of it. How can I expect a reader to stick with it?”
You turn to a favorite writer. Not to his/her books. Just to a little quote, like:
“You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” ~ Ray Bradbury
Now you know: “Oh. I get it . . . just keep at it. You’ll figure it out . . . IF you just keep going. . . trying . . . working . . . writing . . . “
What do your wings look like? What quotes keep YOU motivated? Please share: they’ll help all of us!
Carol Lynch Williams
Since we have a Ray Bradbury theme (and I didn’t know we would!), I asked Michelle Hubbard what we should read of his. She said, “All Summer in a Day.”
So get reading.
Throwing Up Words 