Writers' Help - Edwebs.com

An online learning community on Edwebs.com facilitating continued writing education for creative and academic writers.

[powells]

The things we write are not so much consciously chosen as gratefully accepted.

Jay Parini, Writing Poetry in the Age of Prose (via powells)

[nypl]

(via What, Wait, What Happened!? The Librarian Is In, Ep. 9 (Bonus Episode!))

[neil-gaiman]

Hi! To learn to write better, I read and analyze really good author's novels, and I'm doing that with The Graveyard Book. In the first chapter, it looks like you used 1st, 2nd, and 3rd persons, but I can't figure out why it worked. Because it did! And it's something that none of my writing teachers taught me how to do or talked about (except to say don't do it, which books say, too), so can you explain why it worked, please? I'm stumped. Thanks!

I’m glad it worked for you. As I said, in the last and the most important of my eight rules for writing, 

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

[lastnightsreading]

Terrance Hayes at Hunter College, 3/1/16

[oupacademic]

Word of the Day: Wordsworthy

adj. Characteristic or suggestive of William Wordsworth or his poetry

Image: “Wordsworth on Helvellyn” by Benjamin Haydon. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

[edwebs-writershelp]

JK Rowling shares Robert Galbraith rejection letters - BBC News

The author shares rejection letters she received while trying to find a publisher for her first crime novel written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

[edwebs-writershelp]

After being homeless for 35 years, a poet in Brazil see his dream come true. #WorldPoetryDay

[edwebs-writershelp]

Rare Footage of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac & Other Beats Hanging Out in the East Village (1959)

We don’t often think of the Beats as family men, and that’s because the most prominent of them weren’t, except William Burroughs for a time (a tragic story or two for another day).

[edwebs-writershelp]

[theparisreview]

The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.

Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction No. 71 (via theparisreview)

[deactivated-blog]

Gabriel García Márquez.

[honeychurch]

Seamus Heaney’s last words: “Don’t be afraid” (Noli timere), painted by Dublin artist Maser

[harpercollins]

We are deeply saddened by the passing of our beloved author, Harper Lee. 

“The world knows Harper Lee was a brilliant writer but what many don’t know is that she was an extraordinary woman of great joyfulness, humility and kindness,” says Michael Morrison, President and Publisher of HarperCollins US General Books Group and Canada. “She lived her life the way she wanted to— in private—surrounded by books and the people who loved her. I will always cherish the time I spent with her.”

[you-are-another-me]

[goodquoteco]

Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.

Neil Gaiman, M is for Magic (via hqlines)

[edwebs-writershelp]

If we learn to write from the sheer love of writing, there is always enough time, but time must be stolen like a quick kiss between lovers on the run. As a shrewd woman once told me, "The busiest and most important man can always find time for you if he's in love with you and, if he can't, then he is not in love." When we love our writing, we find time for it. The trick to finding writing time, then, is to write from love and not with an eye to product. Don't try to write something perfect; just write. Don't try to write the whole megillah; just start the whole megillah. Yes, it is daunting to think of finding time to write an entire novel, but it is not so daunting to think of finding time to write a paragraph, even a sentence. And paragraphs, made of sentences, are what novels, plays, and stories are really made of.

Julia Cameron, The Writer’s Life: Insights from The Right to Write

[quirkbooks]

Some Advice from Gandalf

Advice from Literary Characters for an Awesome 2016