Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.
quote by Lynn Abbey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
Being a librarian certainly helped me with my writing because it made me even more of a reader, and I was always an enthusiastic reader. Writing and reading seem to me to be different aspects of a single imaginative act.
quote by Margaret Mahy
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Once a man has made a commitment to a way of life, he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It's something we call heart power. Once a man has made his commitment, nothing will stop him short of success.
quote by Vince Lombardi
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Laughter
Life is a dull story told by an idiot
Who is the idiot? Macbeth? Shakespeare?
Or the reader himself?
Because where is the text?
Does the reader half create it and
half perceive?
But suppose life were a story
told by an intellectual
Would it make any difference?
poem by Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life ""outside"" the story changes the story.
quote by David Foster Wallace
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.
quote by Helen Dunmore
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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However, lifestyle intervention requires discipline with a tangible end result that is within reach. It requires personal resolve, a lifelong commitment.
quote by Tim Holden
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.
quote by Charles Baudelaire
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Get The Balance Right.
Commitment is made, to live and love.
Don't let the colour fade, below or above.
You've got to give and take, right down the line.
If you don't, things will break everything that is going fine.
Admit when you are wrong, being right is not to pretend,
Balance the weak and strong, maintain the right blend.
Just remember, when life doesn't flow, balance the scales,
Deep inside you know, it never fails.
07/09/87
poem by Guy Lipmore
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The Lamp
Writing poetry is like rubbing an old lamp.
At first all you're trying to do is get
the dust off, see what you've got a hold of and
what the lamp is made of.
Once the smoke starts to rise and the Genie
begins to appear, you sense the magic
without knowing what direction it will take you,
or the reader.
poem by Tom J. Mariani
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Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.
quote by Edmond de Goncourt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
quote by Twyla Tharp
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.
quote by Lynn Abbey
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The reader really has to step up to the plate and read a short story.
quote by Tobias Wolff
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I want the reader to feel something is astonishing. Not the 'what happens,' but the way everything happens. These long short story fictions do that best, for me.
quote by Alice Munro
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.
quote by Eric Brown
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I Come Alive In Writing
I come alive in writing
Even if the writing means nothing to anyone else-
I come alive in writing
Even if I am totally deluding myself as to its value-
I come alive in writing
Even if at times while writing there is an underlying hopelessness and despair -
I come alive in writing
As if writing is what God has given me to do-
I come alive in writing
As if through it I can truly give to and help others-
I come alive in writing
As if life has meaning through it-
I come alive in writing
Even when I sense the writing is not good or great
As I would wish it to be.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Ramblings At 3am
It's almost 3 in the morning.
I haven't gone it sleep yet.
I've been listening to slam poetry for 4 hours now.
Don't ask me why,
Cause frankly I don't know.
Why don't you ask your sister.
I had to quickly use the potty
That's when these words came to my mind.
It's a little fucked up world in my head,
Although it's not much crazier then 911.
This may not make any sense to you,
Probably not even me in the morning.
Well sorry to cut this short,
But I gotta go.
Stop writing this poem,
Cause my baby brother is waking up.
I don't know where this is going,
But why don't you ask your sister?
If you don't have a sister,
Then ask your brother.
If you don't have a brother,
Then your probably one of them spoiled only child bitches,
But that's okay.
You can't help it!
Brandi Young
8-16-06
poem by Brandi Young
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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18 Definitions Of A Short Poem
1) A short poem
Saves time,
2) A short poem
Saves time
For its reader, also.
3) A short poem is over
Before its read.
4) A short poem
Can be swiftly reread.
5) A short poem
Is a lightning flash.
6) A short poem
Is one metaphor only.
7) A short poem
Is less than nine words.
8) A short poem
Opens ones eyes
In the morning.
9) A short poem
May be a short prayer.
10) A short poem
May be a poem of a single word.
11) Poem.
12) A short poem
A small play on words.
13) A short poem
May be a single sentence.
14) A short poem is shorter
Than the definition of it.
15) It breaks up the icy sea within.
16) A chill down the spine.
17) There is no end
To making definitions of the short poem.
18) A short poem in Hebrew
Is shorter than than the same poem in English.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.
quote by John Sayles
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a sense that Cal, in writing his story, is perhaps inventing his past as much as recalling it.
quote by Jeffrey Eugenides
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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