Quotes
Quotable Quotes - 8 by Quotes
(Contd. from page 3...)
See things as they are and write about them. Don’t waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know.
This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you’re doing, or it comes out flat. You can’t fake your way through this.
The key to non-anxious sermon-writing is that it’s not about me. It’s about the congregation. I honor the fact that the listeners bring more to the sermon than I do. I remind myself of the hundreds of times someone says, 'I loved how you said…' and then tell me things that they heard that were nowhere in my text and that I never said. But they heard what they needed to hear.
Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.
A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.