Breakthrough in world’s oldest undeciphered writing
The world’s oldest undeciphered writing system, which has so far defied attempts to uncover its 5,000-year-old secrets, could be about to be decoded by Oxford University academics.
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Writing quote by Diana Gabaldon
“The more you do anything, the better you get at it. Guaranteed. Ballerinas aren’t born on their toes.”
~Diana Gabaldon
(Twitter 2014-01-21)
Making a living as an author…
If you are serious, and you want to make a living as an author, then you need to hustle. Period. If you can’t make that quality, then you need to concentrate on your craft and practice more.
One other thing, quality comes with practice. If you are prolific, then you become a better writer because you are writing. The more you do anything the better at it you will become. So in a way, quantity does add to quality.
Being a writer…
“Being a writer? Not a bad thing, just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the one where you actually live in.”
– Cornelia Funke
Choosing A Time Period For Your Historical Novel, by Adrian Goldsworthy | Writing Historical Novels
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Joanna Campbell Slan: How to Edit Your Work
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This seems like excellent advice. (Also, do read some of Johanna Campbell Slan’s work, if you like mysteries. I really enjoyed Cut, Crop & Die and I’m looking forward to reading more by JCS.)
Advice for writers
To observe the world carefully, to write a lot and often, on a schedule if necessary, to use the dictionary a lot, to look up word origins, to analyze closely the work of writers you admire, to read not only contemporaries but writers of the past, to learn at least one foreign language, to live an interesting life outside of writing.
—
Lydia Davis when asked what advice she has for young writers
Explaining too much…
When a writer tries to explain too much, he’s out of time before he begins.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Five common traits of good writers
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About Writing
In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another. Pleasure also in the imagination of the story, the feeling that it could mean something. Mostly I was glad to find out that I could write at all. In writing you work toward a result you won’t see for years, and can’t be sure you’ll ever see. It takes stamina and self-mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming. It toughens you and clears your head. I could feel it happening. I was saving my life with every word I wrote, and I knew it.
Tobias Wolff
