Author: womanwriterproject

Are you writing a novel? I am.

Writing a novel requires the creation of a living, breathing alternative world. That’s hard work.

It takes years to write a book, between one and ten years. Annie Dillard says, “Less is so rare as to be statistically insignificant.”

When it bothers you that it’s taking you a long time to finish your manuscript, don’t give up. Keep going. Keep writing. Keep revising.

Really hard. It just is. As soon as you accept this, you can stop resisting, and start putting your energy toward moving forward.

Don’t bother looking for shortcuts. It takes time and hard work.

Don’t listen to charlatan’s who say it’s easy. Writing is never easy, and on some days it’s not even fun. But for writers, writing is the only thing worth doing.

“Writing a book [substitute your favorite genre for book] is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”–George Orwell, author of literary classics 1984 and Animal Farm

I read every day. I tell my students to read and read widely.

Reading is the one necessary prerequisite for writing.

If you’re a reader, you know the forms and conventions of writing and how others use the forms and conventions to shape their work. You know how to write.

Maybe you don’t know how to begin or continue or finish. Maybe you don’t know how to publish what you’ve written.

But I’m here to tell you that you do know how to write.

The rest can be learned.

This blog can help.

Cynthia Ozick said, “If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage.”

To sit down and write when you have dozens of other pressing demands, takes courage. But there is no other way to write.

Today let’s remember Katherine Anne Porter’s words: One of the marks of a gift is to have the courage of it.