"It's all about using everything and spinning it into something creative.  Instead of kicking against the pricks, you readjust your trajectory and go with the current.  Instead of pushing back against people you feel are attacking you, you use your opponent's momentum to disable them, much as you would in ju-jitsu."

"Wait until the book is finished before making a judgment on its content. By the time you have gone through twenty drafts, the characters may have developed lives of their own, completely separate from the people you based them on in the beginning. And even if someone, at some time, gets upset with your words—so what? Live your life, sing your song. Anyone who loves you will want you to have that."

"A permission slip [to write]: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will." (artist)

"I'm fortunate that so many major players in my early life [and memoirs] don't read books."

"Stop thinking about all the reasons you have not to write your memoir and what people in your family might think and just get busy writing it."

"It's OK to risk failure as you explore new ideas."

"An abandoned story at page one or page 356 has the same value as a story you never wrote in the first place."

"The antidote to fear is to continually, one day at a time, stay out of the result and place ourselves squarely in the process."

"The stupid conclusion that if he cannot write easily he has mistaken his career is sheer nonsense."

"When you're writing your first book, nobody really cares, except you.  It's totally self-motivated.  Writing [my second book] was the toughest thing I've ever done."

"Every great writer was once a beginner.  Remember that.  Don't beat yourself up for not knowing something.  Go out and learn it."

"This would-be novelist has betrayed herself in order that she not tell the story that has been clawing its way out from her core. She would rather not commit herself to the truth that she has found in the rigor of writing every day. This form of restraint is common and wholly unnecessary."

"You feel very alive constantly being one decision away from disaster."

"Another source of restraint for the writer is the use of personal confession and the subsequent guilt that often arises from it."

"I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren't any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for."

"The urge to produce another—to redeem the first book by writing a second—led to my own spurt of inefficient frenzy, which didn't result in anything of worth.  I was stalled, not be writer's block, but by the conviction that whatever I wrote had to be of superior worth."

"I encourage writers to not look at their reviews, and I usually don't." (artist)

"Instruction in writing is oftenest aimed at the oblivious tradesman of fiction, and the troubles of the artist are dismissed or overlooked."

"Writers are a pretty insecure bunch, but I've never met one who blames their sales on their bad writing."

"Most experienced performers will say that they don't get nervous.  I don't get nervous anymore because everything that can be go wrong in my shows has already happened.  I've knocked my table over.  I've had an audience volunteer start crying.  I've had props break.  I've injured myself.  Literally anything that can go wrong has gone wrong, and now I know what to do when it does."

"As a general rule, I won't ever cut anything because I feel it makes me 'look bad' or is personally humiliating.  I am impervious to those considerations.  I lack a sense of personal discretion or protection in my work because I feel like, if this is what I do for a living, I have to do it 100 percent or not at all."

"There are gasps and shouts, even some violinistic cries. He has sent several people scurrying to the woods in fear, which is unfortunate, but it is the sort of thing that happens when one finds the words that truly come from within oneself."

"There are also amazing highs; a fantastic piece of dialogue, a great idea, a shot that really works.  You have to hang on to those moments and learn to push the anxiety away."

"The writer who wants to tap the larger truth in himself must reflect the temptations of Joyce or Camus or Tennessee Williams, as exhibited in the literary reviews.  He must forget the money waiting for him in mass-circulation.  He must ask himself, 'What do I really think of the world, what do I love, fear, hate?' and begin to pour this on paper." (artist)

"Every painting I've produced falls short of my expectations.  They are my children, but they're all juvenile delinquents.  I'm not proud of them."

"Writing is not brain surgery—no one will die if someone doesn't like your story."

"The [creative] work I'm doing now, and the work I will do, is why I left corporate America.  If I can't remember to embrace the craziness with a smile, then I've made a terrible mistake."

"Now I'm almost addicted to the risk of failure. ...the adrenalin that comes from creative fear."

"This is why virtually all inexperienced writers end up in their heads instead of the unconscious: because the unconscious is scary as hell. It is hell for many of us."

"As soon as things get difficult, I walk away.  That's the great secret of creativity.  You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.  If you try to approach a cat and pick it up, hell, it won't let you do it.  You've got to say, 'Well, to hell with you.'  And the cat says, 'Wait a minute.  He's not behaving the way most humans do.'  Then the cat follows you out of curiosity: 'Well, what's wrong with you that you don't love me?'  Well, that's what an idea is.  See?  You just say, 'Well, hell, I don't need depression.  I don't need worry.  I don't need to push.'  The ideas will follow me.  When they're off-guard, and ready to be born, I'll turn around and grab them."

"A novel like The Grapes of Wrath may fill a new writer with feelings of despair and good old-fashioned jealousy—'I'll never be able to write anything that good, not if I live to be a thousand'—but such feelings can also serve as a spur, goading the writer to work harder and aim higher."

"The biggest risk was initially sharing the music when I put my first song out.  When you put out something that's such a big part of you, it's emotionally exposing.  It was a huge personal and emotional risk.  It could have gone so many different ways, but, thankfully, it went the best way it could have."

"Writing a novel is not nearly as difficult as some people would make it out to be."

"The writer's life is filled with endless unknowns and terminable dreads, but when we acknowledge that the thrill of creation is its own reward, we are the lucky ones."

"Yell.  Jump.  Play.  Out-run those sons-of-bitches.  They'll never live the way you live.  Go do it."

 This Year You Write Your Novel

"Perhaps you keep your drafts folder to yourself, for your eyes only.  You have never submitted.  You're too busy, you say; you'll start another day.  You write for you.  And you secretly fear hearing what an editor has to say.  I urge you: Put yourself out there."

"I like the idea that one day I'll do something that really works, even if I fear that I've been saying the same things for over thirty years."

The View from the Cheap Seats

"High-impact fiction requires high courage. It means not only doing something different, but delving into what matters to you: what terrifies, outrages, grieves, inspires, hurts, and heals you."

"The best thing we can do is give ourselves the gift of being free from the fear of failure.  Negative thinking can lead to anxiety and depression, and these are certain creativity killers."

"As writers, we were driven to feature women like us, to tell our stories in a vernacular descriptive of our own lives, our hopes and fears, neuroses and dreams."

"Too many manuscripts tell their stories with timidity.  What's needed instead are explosive bursts of divinity: Eruptions of insight, booms of self-revelation, scenes that flare open in the dark, prose that sizzles like sparklers."

"What gives a story high impact is that which is most personal and passionate in its author.  That includes your own fears.  They are your compass.  They're directing you toward what unsettles.  And also to what matters."

"When other novelists unsettle us, we praise them.  Yet when our own writing unsettles us, we worry."

"I warmly sympathise with you. I too, am lazy. My heart sinks when I contemplate the two or three hundred virgin sheets of foolscap I have to besmirch with more or less well chosen words in order to produce a 60,000-word book."

"Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting or living itself, which is the greatest art of all ... creativity, at heart, is the essence of man's being."

"Again and again my stories and my plays teach me, remind me, that I must never doubt myself, my gut, my ganglion or my Ouija subconscious again."

"If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain."

"You have to give yourself permission, say to yourself, 'I'm not foolish for wanting this.'  All writers have to fight the same fight.  I have to write 2,000 words today, no matter what.  That's my discipline, and that's me protecting the work."

"Not treating the actual process preciously removes some of the inhibitions that people put in their path.  Those inhibitions become excuses not to write."

 "A good story occurs when the author travels, or even plummets, into the depths of vulnerability in search of truths that otherwise go untold." (artist)

"We must all remember that it's natural to be a little scared of our story.  To be unsure of the ending.  To be unsure of ourselves."

"I think the word is fearless because once writers start editing how they do what they do or what they're writing about, I think you've already lost what you need to be doing. So I think being a writer is emotionally brave, and if you can't go there, maybe you're not ready to do it yet."

"To allow yourself that space is, I think, the nub of creativity.  It's also scary and risky, because you're building a house with no real blueprint, driving without a map, never quite sure where the hell you're going."

"For me to write, I can't be thinking about who's going to read this.  It would be inhibiting."

"Have the courage to go forth and do not what everybody else is doing but what you want to do."

"Writing is hard for every last one of us... Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."

"No art ever came out of not risking your neck."

"Fiction's not a place for hiding.  Your skin is in the game, from the moment you begin."

"I say this with great honesty: I always approach a book by writing about the thing that keeps me up at night.  What is really waking me up or keeping me from falling asleep?  What am I grappling with?  And then I think, I cannot be the only one on this planet thinking about this right now.  I can't be the only one worried about this.  I start with whatever that experience is, and I just keep peeling it until it's more of the raw experience, and that's where I think fiction steps in."

"You wanna be a better writer, you'll write outside your own proscribed margins."

"Some books, because [Stephen King] has a critical following, people tear apart—but the next book might be considered an instant classic.  He's not afraid."

"All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique.  All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up." (artist)

"Great poetry or even excellent poetry is written by people who are not afraid to reveal their flaws."

"Set challenges for yourself, then tackle them. ... Treat it like a game where the rules are ever-changing.

"Write a story that draws its energy from the minor anxieties of day-to-day life, so that when it reaches its climax, the reader experiences genuine catharsis and feels temporarily purged of all those fears."

"You're going to be, and probably always have been, led to avert your eyes. But turning from that path is what it means to be an artist. You need courage, and that's something I can't teach you. I can teach you that you've got to have it."

"Try not to please anyone or any particular audience.  Find out what the real work is inside of you, then find the courage to do it well."

"If you aren't getting rejected by 90 percent of the things you apply to, you aren't aiming high enough."

"Sooner or later we have to face who we are in the world around us.  We have to respond.  Eventually, we have to speak from the truest parts of ourselves."

"Every artist in the world fights this battle every day. To go to a scary place that makes some other part of you say: What are you doing? No. Just no. No. No.  The only way to create a work of literary art is to stop that voice. Your total attention needs to be on the sensual flow of experience from the unconscious."

"If your writing can't touch on the whole range of emotions from joy to despair—if you are somehow protecting yourself from feeling in order to buttress your sheltered ego, you are not writing.  You are not living, either." (artist)

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good."

"Cut your heart out of your chest, clutch it in your fist, and slam it down onto the paper.  That is the real meaning of write what you know, which is probably written as, write with total fucking honesty.  Take all that shit that lurks inside you, all your fears and wants and experiences, all your neuroses and psychoses and loves and loathings, all your hopes and dreams and memories, and inject 'em into your work." (artist)

"Worry about the writing and nothing else.  Don't worry about sales, agents, publishers, any of that. Get a dozen works under your belt of whatever length you feel comfortable writing, polish them within an inch of perfection, and get them out there. The rest can be a slow burn."

"The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always."

"The creative life is very much one where you need to put on blinders and charge forth regardless of what might be out there. You will always find reasons not to do something. It's much harder—and much more valuable—to find the opposite."

"Writing is a primal scream. It's yelling into a hole. It's the crystallization of your thoughts and fears. Writing cages your worry."

"Life is too short not to take risks and too long to live with an output of weak-kneed, limp-noodled, utterly derivative, safe-as-houses storytelling."

"Find clarity in what you do.  Remove noise and zero in on pure signal. All that matters is what you do.  Put differently: don't care so much."

"I think being a writer is emotionally brave, and if you can't go there, maybe you're not ready to do it yet."

"'Writer's guilt': A tension between desperately wanting to record life's richness, but knowing that pulling out my paper and pen will take me away from the beauty that surrounds me."

"Every time I start a book, I think, I have no idea how I did this the last time.  No idea." (artist)

"Dangerous writing is not serial killers or speed-crazed race car drivers.  What makes writing dangerous is something much more personal. To write dangerous is something much more personal.  To write dangerous is to go to parts of ourselves that we know exist but try to ignore—parts that are sad, sore; parts that are silent, and heavy.  Taboo.  Things that won't leave us alone."

"I would have bet twenty to one against my own success, but by continuing I could lose only pen and paper; and if the one chance in twenty did turn up in my favor, then how much might I win!"

"When you write, you cannot flinch. You have to go down into that deepest, darkest, most roiling, white-hot place ... whatever scared the hell out of you down there—and there's plenty—you have to go in there; down into the deepest part of it, and you can't flinch, can't walk away. That's the only way to create a work of art—even though you have plenty of defense mechanisms to keep you out of there, and those defense mechanisms are going to work against you mightily."

"Be fearless about telling the truth because that's where the rich writing is going to come from."

"Just unclench, live your life and spend less time berating yourself.  Anxiety and stress are the enemies of creativity."

"The most important thing I've learned is to trust my instincts.  My professor Kathryn Harrison had this interesting way of putting it, that it's like walking a tightrope, and you're doing it but, the minute you start having doubts or second-guessing yourself—that's when you start to lose your balance.  It took me a while to get to a place where I finally did trust my instincts, and it was very liberating.  From then on, I felt more confident to take risks in the writing and break the rules, if you will."

"Protect your voice and your vision.  Protect it—and if going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don't do it.  It's awfully rough right now.  It's a jungle out there.  Do what gets you to write, and not what blocks you."

"The universe always rewards courage.  The more you move in the direction of what your gifts are, and what your life road is, the more people and events and experiences will conspire to give you what you need.  Write."

"Cast off the fear.  I was terrified about writing stories about where I came from because I was embarrassed.  Truly great writers are not afraid to bare their souls.  Sometimes you may feel like: 'I shouldn't have put that in there, I don't want people to think it's about me or look at me differently.'  Toss those thoughts aside.  That's a mental block.  Don't think about it.  Just do it.  As long as you write from a place of purity, and it comes from your heart, you can't go wrong."

"I spent a lot of time worrying that I wasn't being a writer in the correct way. I don't write every day—I write when I'm burning with an idea. I don't really want to write novels—I prefer stories. These are temperamental issues."

"It's completely out of my hands.  That's the magical and destructive thing a writer has to face: control is much more of an illusion than you imagine."

"I'm afraid that I won't get it right.  That I'll bring too many biases.  That I won't see the lies."