Writing Gives Thoughts Value

A few useful thoughts and inspiring insights on creativity and the writing process.

Writing Begins Things

Writing is about making beginnings. It is about bringing something into existence that did not exist before. All true art works in this way.

Finding a Way In

The hardest part of any task is getting started, finding a way in. This can be especially true with writing where one must establish so much early on.

Plan Writing Ahead

It is easier to get out of bed in the morning if one has a clear and precise knowledge of the work one will be doing that day. I think it a wise thing to plan the next day’s work the evening before.

End Your Writing Session with Questions

Here is a good trick with which to end a writing session: quickly type up a list of questions about what happens next, or what is to become of so-and-so, or such-and-such, and so on. When one returns to the work, one tends to have answers.

Be Your Own Cause

Writers must remain true to their own vision. Only by trusting their personal vision implicitly can they be motivated from within and act as “their own cause.”

Writing Gives Thoughts Value

Here is a wonderful reason to sit down and write. The line is from critic Harold Bloom’s, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? :

Are your thoughts of any value if they stay within you?

Finish What You Start

A work in progress can seem depressingly inadequate. Charles Morgan, in his novel, The Voyage, offers this insight:

The simplest acts of the imagination always appear to be useless until they are completed and fulfilled.

Atwood on Literature

Canadian author, Margaret Atwood has this to say about literary writing:

Then there are stories classed as ‘serious’ literature, which centre not on external threats — although some of these may exist — but on relationships among the characters…some of the characters must cause trouble for the others.

The Tygers of Wrath

William Blake was a big believer in the inspiring power of passion so it is not surprising that he would think,

The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

The Value of Art

“Art nourishes and enlightens.” – motto of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra.