My first car, a hybrid pioneered by my Uncle Ab, was a ’61 VW with a Model A Ford radiator hood welded to the Bug. An eye-catcher wherever it went, this car screamed, “I am unique on the road!”
Lee Smith (b. November 1): “We have to pay attention” & other quotes on writing
1 Nov
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Lee Smith, born 1 November 1944, is an American fiction author whose writing has won the O. Henry Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction.
Quotes on writing:
- I like books. I like to read for four hours at a stretch.
- If you’re writing, you’re always living your life in a very attentive manner, because you have to.
- The practice of writing itself is a way of staying in touch with the deeper, more meaningful self and the experience of writing.
- We have to pay attention. It’s a lifetime of paying attention and of listening and looking and seeing images and hearing stories and noticing things.
- When you’re just flat-out writing, it’s very much like prayer. You’re totally out of yourself, and you come back to yourself with this sort of feeling that you don’t get from anything else.
- I think writing has always had a powerful corrective influence and possibility. We have to write about what’s good, and we also have to write about parts of our culture that are not good, that are not working out. I think it takes a new eye.
- My advice for young writers is just do it. Don’t wait for some ideal point in your life when you will finally have “time to write.” No sane person ever has time to write. Don’t clean the bathroom, don’t paint the hall. Write. Claim your time. And remember that a writer is a person who is writing, not a person who is publishing.
Evelyn Waugh (b. October 28): “An artist must be a reactionary” & other quotes on writing
28 Oct
Evelyn Waugh (born 28 October 1903, died 10 April 1966) was an English author, born into a family of publishers and writers. Waugh’s first book, A Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was published in 1928. Soon afterwards his first novel, Decline and Fall, appeared and his career was sensationally launched. Evelyn Waugh wrote 15 novels and several acclaimed travel books, two additional biographies, and an autobiography, A Little Learning.
Quotes on writing:
- I put words down and push them around a bit.
- There are no poetic ideas, only poetic utterances.
- Some people think in pictures, some in ideas. I think entirely in words.
- One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.
- An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
- Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
- Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.
- I should like to bury something precious in every place where I’ve been happy and then, when I’m old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.
- I used to have a rule when I reviewed books as a young man: never to give an unfavorable notice to a book I hadn’t read. I find even this simple rule is flagrantly broken now.
- Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.
Jonathan Stroud (b. October 27): “Try different kinds of writing” & other quotes
27 Oct
Jonathan Stroud, born 27 October 1970, is an author of fantasy books, mainly for children and young adults. He is best known for the Bartimaeus Trilogy.
Quotes on writing:
- Practise: Write as much and as often as possible.
- Read: As above, as much and as widely as you can.
- Experiment: Try as many different kinds of writing as you can.
- When I write something that would have made me laugh as a 10-year-old, or would have scared me or would have excited me, I know I’m onto something.
- When I was young, I kept a diary for about 10 years and I had to write in it every day. Even on days when nothing seemed to happen, I made myself think of something to put in it.
- The important thing about any book is that you have to have a good story and that it has to be exciting. Then it’s nice to add other levels underneath that people can pick up on.
- As an author, you need to keep talking to your audience to remind yourself what they like and what they don’t like. You spend most of your life locked in a room, and you need to be social occasionally.
How to post a book review on Amazon
24 Oct
How to post a book review on Amazon
If you’ve never posted a book review on Amazon before, here are the simple steps to follow (and make an indie writer’s day):
First, go to Amazon.com, because that’s where all of the readers are.
See the search field at the top of the Amazon page and use the pull-down menu on the left to select “Books.” Type in the author’s name, <enter> and this will take you to the author’s books.
Click on the book you want to review. This takes you to another page, with a description of the book and some information about the author. Scroll down to the review section, where you’ll see a graph showing reviews with 1-5 star ratings. Click on the “Write a customer review” button to the right.
That takes you to the book’s review page. If it’s a novel, you’ll see questions. (If the book is non-fiction, these questions won’t appear):
- How would you describe the plot?
- Which of these words best describe the mood?
- How would you describe the pace?
- How would you describe the characters?
Several boxes are provided under each question to cover your probable responses. Click one under each question and move on.
You’ll next be offered to submit a 1-5 star rating. As soon as (but not before) you click a number of stars, a comment field will appear just below that, where you can write anything from a sentence to a few paragraphs of review.
As soon as you start writing comments, another field will appear below that, with space to write a headline for your review. Write something brief and/or catchy, so that all three items (headline, body, rating) will appear together once posted.
Once you’ve entered all the requisite fields, click the yellow “Submit” button in the lower right, and that’s it.
Thank you for your support!
Drake (b. 24 October 1986): “I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.”
24 Oct
“I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.”
~ Drake, b. 24 October 1986
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Read my lips
22 Oct
Read my lips. They say so many things about me. They form sentences you wouldn’t believe. No one respects language better than me.
Kim Kardashian (b. October 21): “I am so stereotyped…”
21 Oct
“I am so stereotyped into being this Hollywood girl.”
~ Kim Kardashian, b. 21 October 1980
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Arthur Rimbaud (b. October 20): “Life is the farce we’re all forced to endure.”
20 Oct
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Arthur Rimbaud (born 20 October 1854, died 10 November 1891) was a French poet who produced his works while still in his late teens. Victor Hugo described him as ‘an infant Shakespeare’. He gave up creative writing before the age of 20. He was a restless soul who travelled on three continents before his death from cancer just after his 37th birthday.
Four quotes:
- Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.
- Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.
- I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am there.
- A thousand Dreams within me softly burn.
Marina Lewycka (b. October 12): “Comedy can expose the soul” & other quotes on writing
12 Oct
Marina Lewycka, born 12 October 1946, is a British novelist of Ukrainian origin. Her debut novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian was long-listed for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and short-listed for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Six quotes on writing:
- One of the nice things about being a writer is that no one recognizes you.
- I’m a huge fan of Chaucer, he has the most wonderful characters, and I drew on him a lot for Two Caravans.
- My preferred place to write is in bed propped up with lots of cushions, and a nice pot of tea on a tray – but it can be hard on the back.
- I like to learn something as I write. I often start out with a subject I don’t know very much about and finding out more makes the process more interesting.
- You think comedy isn’t serious, but with comedy you can say such a lot that serious can’t. Comedy can expose the depths of the soul; funny is what we are when we least intend to be.
- You must have a good story and find the right voice to tell it. Another useful tip is show, don’t tell. In other words, don’t write that a character behaved badly, show us their bad behavior instead.
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