The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “writing”

Joy Williams on Why Writers Write
Joy Williams on Why Writers Write

“A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light.”

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Why I Write: Joan Didion on Ego, Grammar, and the Creative Impulse
Why I Write: Joan Didion on Ego, Grammar, and the Creative Impulse

“Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write.”

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Margaret Atwood’s 10 Rules of Writing
Margaret Atwood’s 10 Rules of Writing

“­Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.”

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Zadie Smith’s 10 Rules of Writing
Zadie Smith’s 10 Rules of Writing

“Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.”

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How to Read Like a Writer
How to Read Like a Writer

“All the elements of good writing depend on the writer’s skill in choosing one word instead of another.”

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So You Want To Be a Writer: Charles Bukowski’s No-Nonsense Antidote to the “Tortured Genius” Mythos of Creativity
So You Want To Be a Writer: Charles Bukowski’s No-Nonsense Antidote to the “Tortured Genius” Mythos of Creativity

“unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it.”

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Freud on Creative Writing and Daydreaming
Freud on Creative Writing and Daydreaming

“The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real.”

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Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing
Neil Gaiman’s 8 Rules of Writing

“Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.”

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Why Emotional Excess is Essential to Writing and Creativity
Why Emotional Excess is Essential to Writing and Creativity

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”

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Ezra Pound’s List of the Six Types of Writers, Plus His Two Rules for Forming an Opinion
Ezra Pound’s List of the Six Types of Writers, Plus His Two Rules for Forming an Opinion

A taxonomy of scribe sensibilities, with some advice on how to make up your mind.

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