Write fast.

Write so fast, your inner editor can't catch you.

-- Carrie Kei Heim Binas

Thus ends the second-half-of-November inspirational-quote marathon. If you're still doing NaNoWriMo, WHAT ARE YOU DOING ONLINE?!?!!? GO WRITE!

Every minute you spend writing.

[My] first manuscript will never be published, but writing it was in NO way a waste of time. If you want to be a writer, every minute you spend writing is valuable . . . The world will never see the product, but the process was worth every second.

-- Alison Cherry

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Courage.

Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.

-- Anaïs Nin

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Persistence.

How often -- even before we began -- have we declared a task "impossible"? And how often have we construed a picture of ourselves as being inadequate? . . . A great deal depends upon the thought patterns we choose and on the persistence with which we affirm them.

-- Piero Ferrucci

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

The same age.

Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

When I make this point in teaching, I am met by instant defensive hostility: "But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?"

Yes . . . the same age you will be if you don't.

So let's start.

-- Julia Cameron

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

The energy it takes to pout.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

-- Duke Ellington

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Dare.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

-- Seneca (4 B.C. - 65 A.D.)

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Lose your fear.

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

-- Joseph Chilton Pearce

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Trust your subconscious.

... I discovered that if I trusted my subconscious, or imagination, whatever you want to call it, and if I made the characters as real and honest as I could, then no matter how complex the pattern being woven, my subconscious would find ways to tie it together -- often doing things far more complicated and sophisticated than I could with brute conscious effort. I would have ideas for 'nodes', as I think of them -- story or character details that have lots of potential connections to other such nodes -- and even though I didn't quite understand, I would plunk them in. Two hundred pages later, everything would back-fit, and I'd say, "Ah, that's why I wrote that."

-- Tad Williams

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

The seat of your pants.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

-- Mary Heaton Vorse

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Write much?

By writing much, one learns to write well.

-- Robert Southey

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Figure out what you have to say.

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

-- Barbara Kingsolver

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Take chances.

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

-- William Faulkner

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

How to write a novel.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Fail Better.

Ever tried.

Ever failed.

No matter.

Try again.

Fail again.

Fail better.

-- Samuel Beckett

Daily inspirational quotes will be posted here through the rest of November. KEEP WRITING.

Your Daily Writing Inspiration

J.K. Rowling

It's November 15. If you're doing NaNoWriMo, you may be kicking ass and taking names, or you think you're already so far behind that you can never catch up. BUT YOU CAN. Keep trying. And I'm going to post one inspirational writing quote each day for the rest of the month to help keep you going...

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

--J.K. Rowling

Teen Writing Workshop, Winter Session

Starting at the end of January 2012, I'll be teaching a class for teens at Grub Street (otherwise known as Boston's Best Literary Gang)! The class will have no more than 12 students, aged 13-18, and there are some scholarship spots available...

This class is for teenaged writers who want to learn about and practice the art of "workshopping" one's writing. During this course, you will have the opportunity to “workshop” your poems and stories in class. We will discuss the strengths in your work as well as opportunities for revision. An inspiring and generative experience for young writers who are eager to develop their voice while helping others do the same. For writers age 13-18 ONLY.

SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITIES: Grub Street is happy to be able to offer a limited number of full scholarships for this course. You are eligible for one of these scholarships if you are in a household that receives benefits from Massachusetts SNAP or Massachusetts TANF, if you are a foster child, and/or if your household’s gross income is within the free limits on the Federal Income Guidelines.

To apply for a scholarship, please send an email of no more than 500 words to chris@grubstreet.org describing why you want to take this class and stating that you meet the requirements above. At the end of the email, list the name and email address or phone number of one teacher or other non-relative adult whom we could contact for a recommendation. Please put "Winter Teen Scholarship" in the Subject line of the email. Deadline is 12:00pm on Friday, January 13th.

Register for my class here. I welcome fiction, narrative non-fiction (such as memoir), and poetry. I also welcome ALL GENRES -- literary, science fiction, mystery, romance, young adult, fantasy, horror, anything.

You bring the writing. I'll help you make it better, and I'll help you to help OTHERS to do the same.

Damn(ed).

Thanks to Maine Character for forwarding me this interview with Chuck Palahniuk! The author is delightful and insightful as always, and I also recommend you follow the links to my previous posts about meeting Chuck and Chuck's keynote speech at the Grub Street 2010 Muse & the Marketplace writing conference.

In other news, I just finished reading Chuck's most recent novel, Damned. And damned if I don't think it's his first book for the young adult market.