The Write Place
Here you will find everything to do with writing, whether it is my writing or what I'm learning from reading books on writing. Reading, vocabulary, and grammar are the tools of the trade. The very best people to learn from are the ones who are seasoned writers who teach writing. You would be wise to enlist them as your mentors, as I have.
- In: The Write Place
As an author, I use a variety of instruments to pen words on paper, in notebooks, or journals. At night I write a grateful list and a few words about my day. I prefer pens to pencils, particularly the gel pens, because they use bright ink and never skip. My penmanship has changed over the years and when I look back at the style of my writing, I wonder if it reflects a change in my personality, who I was, and who I am now. There are people who actually study the loops in letters and can tell you what this tells you about the person who wrote it.
- In: The Write Place
Carolyn Chute was 38 when "The Beans of Egypt, Maine" was published in 1985, providing the author, who lived at poverty level, with commercial success with five hard cover printings in the first three months and almost 200,000 books sold in the first eight months.
- In: The Write Place
Author of such Sci-Fi classics as "The Martian Chronicles", "Fahrenheit 451", and "Something Wicked This Way Comes", Bradbury, like all the other writers I've introduced here previously, believed that as long as you keep writing, you are not a failure. "The average young person....seems to have the motto, 'If at first you don't succeed, stop right there.' They want to start at the top of their profession and not to learn their art on the way up." Bradbury wrote everyday of his life except weekends which were for his family. He believed material things were not important. Getting the work done 'beautifully and proudly' is important. The money will come as a reward for creating beautiful work. Things don't belong to you. All you'll ever have is yourself.
- In: The Write Place
In this interview when Truman Capote was 42, right before "In Cold Blood" was published, Capote is excited about this new kind of book, the "non-fiction novel."
Born in 1924 to his 16 year old mother, a restless and intelligent spirit, at 18 his mother went to college. By the time she graduated his parents were divorced and he was sent to live with his elderly uncle and three elderly ladies. It was a lonely life in a remote part of Alabama but it was here that he became interested in writing. When he left school at 17, he went right to work in the art department at the New Yorker (painting was also a deep interest).
- In: The Write Place
For a time, Steinbeck lived and worked with migrant workers from Oklahoma and California. The result was "The Grapes of Wrath" and a Pulitzer Prize. These words of wisdom are from a letter he published in 1963.