GET INSPIRED! ;) Some thoughts about writing and creativity

"Writing is not like dancing or modeling; it's not something where--if you missed it by age 19--you're finished. It's never too late. Your writing will only get better as you get older and wiser. If you write something beautiful and important, and the right person somehow discovers it, they will clear room for you on the bookshelves of the world--at any age. At least try."
-Elizabeth Gilbert


"At last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it."
-Brenda Ueland

"Read widely, read enthusiastically, be guided by instinct and not design. For if you read, you need not become a writer; but if you hope to become a writer, you must read."
-Joyce Carol Oates

"I believe anything that gets people to read is worthwhile. Enduring the snobbery of literati and being forced to read books we did not relate to is what turned so many of us away from books--in junior high, high school and later. I was one of those kids--I pretty much didn't read for pleasure through high school and college. In my early 20's, I had to re-teach myself the joy of reading, by starting with children's books and then young adult books and, eventually, adult books. Then I began writing school, at night, and was thrown right back into an environment that turns its noses up at anything but "fine literary fiction", which is a vague phrase that really means the genre of "contemporary domestic realism".
-Po Bronson


"The most difficult thing about writing is telling the truth."
-Sue Monk Kidd

"By nature human beings are seekers and one's art form becomes the vehicle for the quest. The nature and direction of each person's search varies but all of us seek meaning."
-Michael Rabiger

"I like to draw very much, and as a kid that's all you do in class all day. It's great. If you go to a kindergarten class all the children draw the same, no one's better than another. But something happens when you get older. Society beats things out of you.
I remember going through art school, and you've got to take life drawing, and it was a real struggle. Instead of encouraging you to express yourself and draw like you did when you were a child, they start going by the rules of society.
They say, 'No. No. You can't draw like this. You have to draw like this.'
And I remember one day I was so frustrated--because I love drawing, but actually I'm not that good at it. But one day something clicked in my brain. I was sitting sketching and I thought, 'Fuck it, I don't care if I can draw or not. I like doing it.'
And I swear to God, from one second to the next I had a freedom which I hadn't had before.
From that point on, I didn't care if I could make the human form. I didn't care if people liked it. There was this almost like drug-induced sense of freedom.
And I fight that everyday, someone saying, 'You can't do that. This doesn't make any sense.' Everyday it's a struggle. It's just a question of trying to maintain a certain amount of freedom."
-Tim Burton

"I write to know what I think."
-Joan Didion

"I believe that creativity is a living force that thrums wildly through this world and expresses itself through us. I believe that talent (the force by which ephemeral creativity gets manifested into the physical world through our hands) is a mighty and holy gift. I believe that, if you have a talent (or even if you think you do, or maybe even if you just hope you do), that you should treat that talent with the highest reverence and love.
Don't flip out, in other words, and murder your gift through narcissism, insecurity, addiction, competitiveness, ambition or mediocrity. Frankly--don't be a jerk. Just get busy, get serious, get down to it and write something, for heaven's sake. Try to get out of your own way. Creativity itself doesn't care at all about results--the only thing it craves is the PROCESS. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless. Just love the work."
-Elizabeth Gilbert