Iris Blasi

Oct 24

“Writing makes us decide what we believe — and so it makes us decide who we are. Life is mysterious, and unstable. Writing forces us to draw lines. It’s humbling because we will never hit the mark perfectly. But we must try to get as close as we can. Great writing, as Tolstoy had it, is writing that teaches us how to live. And Faulkner said that the writer must not forget it is ‘the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing, because it is the only thing worth writing about.’” Thought Catalog’s Everyone Should Write

Oct 23

“A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.” E.B. White [via]

Aug 1

“‘Write what you know’ will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect. That is the only way out of the dead end of the Serious Novel which so many ambitious people want to write and no one on earth wants to read.” R.I.P. Gore Vidal

Jun 25

C.S. Lewis’ advice on writing, as given to a young fan:

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing, don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

via Flavorwire’s Brilliant and Inspiring Letters from Authors to their Young Fans

Jun 12

“There comes a time in life when you realize that everything is a dream. Only those things that have been written down have any possibility of being real. That’s all that exists in the end: what’s been written down.” ―James Salter

I could watch this video all day.

Mar 19

“Constructing a sentence is the equivalent of taking a Polaroid snapshot: pressing the button, and watching something emerge. To write one is to document and to develop at the same time. Not all sentences end up in novels or stories. But novels and stories consist of nothing but. Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches. Their nature is at once solitary and social. Sentences establish tone, and set the pace. One in front of the other marks the way.” Jhumpa Lahiri in “My Life’s Sentences”

Mar 15

“It does help, to be a writer, to have the sort of crazed ego that doesn’t allow for failure. The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering “Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!” and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there’s nothing left to write.” Neil Gaiman, On Writing

(via slatios)

Feb 14

What does a writer do?

via

Jan 10

Why I Write: Orhan Pamuk

I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can’t quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

—Orhan Pamuk, in his speech accepting the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature

Dec 22

Good sentences, the ebullient critic and novelist Wilfrid Sheed wrote in 1990, are sent into the air like a series of jazz licks.“You noodle around with tempo and sound until you get the perfect fit for that particular song, and then, so long as you can sustain it, God is on your side and everything comes easily and even the waiters smile.”

—Dwight Garner, in The New York Times Magazine’s year-end feature The Lives They Lived

Iris Blasi

Marketing Manager at Open Road Integrated Media. I like books and the people who read them.

Why I Write: Orhan Pamuk