I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
quote by Doris Lessing
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
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
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Great writing is a submission to a creative force that seems to use the writer as an instrument. The writer finds that the words stream out, almost as if someone else were producing them. Writing becomes a process of discovery.
quote by S. O'Brien
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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For example, many colleges in their writing programs teach some of my work.
quote by Gay Talese
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Mahatma Gandhi is a writer
He who writes is not a writer.
He whose writing has been his life
And who has made his life his writing
Is he who only is called a writer.
13.12.2009
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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When I Write About Giving Up Writing
WHEN I WRITE ABOUT GIVING UP WRITING
When I write about giving up writing,
I am not giving it up
I am instead trying to find another justification for continuing-
I am not giving up then-
If the whole effort is futile
If in the end it will mean nothing
If I despair of it even as I continue it
Still
I will not give up.
I cannot give up.
What else do I have, after all, except the writing?
After all these years of giving my life to it
What other work could ever mean so much?
Even if I fail in it
It is who I am
And what I can do.
I am writing again now
What else can I do?
poem by Shalom Freedman
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative. Like actually writing a script, or writing a book. But the awful truth is that I... probably can't!
quote by Hugh Grant
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Which, of course, isn't the point of writing - but it would be nice if, along with the creative satisfaction of writing and seeing my work in print, I could do more than merely scrape a living. Okay, moaning over.
quote by Eric Brown
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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life!
Life (2nd attempt in writing a song)
What is life?
Life is sometimes great
Sometimes nothing
Most of the time it moves in circle
Though many a time it goes straight
Life is very easy
When you relinquish your dreams
It is very hard
When you want a thing to achieve
What is life?
Life is sometimes great
Sometimes it is nothing
Name fame in life is a game
of pray and hard work
Some one may get some thing
By virtue of a good luck
But things will never come again and again
As life is never a fluke
If you want to achieve some thing concrete
You have to rub your butt against a thorn or prick.
What is life?
Life is very deadly joyful
When you succeeds in love
Life is a lake of tasteless tears
When you have a success in failures.
poem by Abdul Wahab
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Poetry is something that happens in universities, in creative writing programs or in English departments.
quote by Mark Strand
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer.
quote by Russell Banks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Mirror Image
How many times when reading a book,
do we identify with the characters within?
Their traits they have we share,
their loves and heartaches
their lives go through somehow mirror our own.
It’s as if the author was writing about us.
As though he has put us under a microscope
and then writing down everything, he saw.
However, we know this isn’t so
because he or she has written
segments of their own life
and by accident they happen to mirror ours.
Every writer will tell you
that they have their characters under control.
Having written numerous novels,
I know the characters take on a life of their own
and do what they want to do.
We become their instrument as they guide us on our way.
We end up writing what they want us to say.
To every writer his characters are real,
they live, breathe and feel.
The more you write about them,
the more alive they become.
So the next time you pick up a book
and the characters seem real,
they probably are to the author
who looks after them.
24 September 2008
poem by David Harris
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?
quote by Jerry Pournelle
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Paperback Writer
(LennonMcCartney)
Paperback writer
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
It's the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn't understand
His son is working for the Daily Mail
It's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
Paperback writer
It's a thousand pages, give or take a few
I'll be writing more in a week or two
I can make it longer if you like the style
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
If you really like it you can have the rights
It could make a million for you overnight
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer
Paperback writer
Paperback writer
Paperback writer, paperback writer
Paperback writer, paperback writer
Paperback writer, paperback writer
Paperback writer, paperback writer (fade out)
song performed by by Paul McCartney
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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To be a writer
They say, when you have nothing to say
Do not say anything
They say when you have nothing good to say
Do not say anything
He is not convinced
He wants to be a writer and to be one he must write
What is in his mind
To be a writer he must write and write and write
Even when there is nothing to write
Even when there is nothing to say even when nobody listens
Even when the word is dead even when there is no sense at all
Even when he gets blind and deaf and mute even when his fingers are cut even when his mind is blank even when his consciousness is lost
Even when you are angry even when you say what is written is nothing
But trash, dung, cadaver, corpse, poo, pee, even when there is nothing
Anymore,
He writes because he is a writer and no one can stop him now.
he is
he is writing
he is writing always
he is writing always whatever that needs to be written
and here you are foolishly reading. thanks to you, audience of one.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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When I'm writing about reality, I'm writing about death. When I'm writing fiction, I'm writing about life.
quote by Ralph Peters
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.
quote by Robert Morgan
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.
quote by Marilyn Hacker
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Painful Writing
sonnet #11
painful writing
living can be through introspection
searching for the meaning in my life
yet this does not imply perfection
pleasure versus pain is still in strife
i am in growing and creating
in the making ever unfinished
the writer prevented from writing
life passing by not truly engaged
pain prevents me from writing freely
and then i write to escape the pain
still needed by someone uniquely
for together we have smelt the rain
when there is nothing left to explore
being opens up in death a door
poem by Derrick Hubert Schnabel
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.
quote by Edna Ferber
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.
quote by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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