WRITE ADVICE

Excerpt from Q&A with Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones's Diary) By Alan Waldman

What good advice can you give to young writers?

The best advice on writing I ever got was from novelist Muriel Spark, who said "Write as if you were writing to a friend. Do not to try to impress an imaginary audience who isn’t like you." My experience is that it’s always better to write about what you know. I would also say, "Rewrite as much as possible." I believe in showing it to a number of close friends who will be honest with you. Listen to what they say, and rewrite accordingly. I would also warn young writers that everything you do will always take three times longer than you think it will.

Source: http://www.wga.org

 

Excerpt from An Interview with Craig Pearce (Moulin Rouge) By Alan Waldman

What advice would you give young writers, based on your experience?

The biggest thing is to believe in your instincts. Don’t try to write the film you think is going to be successful. Write the film you are really passionate about. If you look at the history of film, from Star Wars to Pulp Fiction to Moulin Rouge, it’s often the surprising ideas that are the surprise successes.

Source: http://www.wga.org

 

QUOTES  ON  WRITING 

 

All The Voices Within Us Become Story

To discover the nature of others inside us may require a creative ruse or literary sleight of hand, even though the task is not different from understanding others in the world. The ability to enter the psyche of another being, real or imaginary, is the root task of creativity and an essential requirement for being in relationship and living in the world. If we cannot imagine and feel the experience of another different from ourselves, then we are not in dialogue or vitally connected to others.

 

What Do I Love ?  (Things I Love)

How we care, what we care about, what we care for are the qualities that reveal character. It is not by one’s sins that you know someone but by what the person celebrates.

 

Of  Writing

It  “should , ideally, be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent … writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”  --- Pico Iyer

*** THE END IS BEYOND US ***

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