why write

Virginia Woolf on Why She Became a Writer and the Shock-Receiving Capacity Necessary for Being an Artist

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This post by Maria Popova originally appeared on Brain Pickings on 9/9/15.

“Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern…the whole world is a work of art… there is no Shakespeare… no Beethoven…no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.”

“Only art penetrates … the seeming realities of this world,” Saul Bellow asserted in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. “There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can’t receive.” Pablo Neruda illuminated this notion from another angle in his magnificent metaphor for why we make art, but the questions of what compels artists to reach for that other reality and how they go about it remains one of the greatest perplexities of the human experience.

No one has addressed this immutable mystery with more piercing insight than Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941). In one of the most breathtaking passages ever written, found in her Moments of Being (public library) — the magnificent posthumous collection of Woolf’s only autobiographical writings — she considers what made her a writer and peers into the heart of the sensemaking mechanism we call art.

 

Read the full post on Brain Pickings.

 

Writer’s Lament: “O’, Writing!”

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This post by Chris Jane originally appeared on chrisjane on 3/17/15.

It’s not hard to imagine a young Dorothy Parker sitting at her Catholic school desk, an arm curled around her paper so the teacher and the girls sitting nearby can’t see what she’s writing (definitely not the assignment).

Or Hunter S. Thompson at his school desk, but without an arm covering his work. Just writing whatever the hell he wants to write.

When I started writing at around twelve years old, it was on my bedroom floor after having read a certain number of magazines with single-page stories on the final page. I decided, “I bet I can do that.” A few hours, three cursive pages, and one or two strikethroughs later, I found the submission address on the back of the magazine and sent in my (absolutely terrible) story.

I don’t remember waiting for a reply, nor being disappointed when nothing came in the mail. What I do remember thinking is, “Woah. I want to do that again.”

Twenty-eight years later (or, about two weeks ago), I’d be sitting behind a laptop in a Barnes and Noble Starbucks and working on book number three when I’d look up and notice the shelves and shelves (and shelves) of books — none of them either of my first two — on the other side of the cafe railing.

How many books, 99% I’d never heard of, were on those shelves?

 

Read the full post on chrisjane.

 

37 Reasons Why You Should Write A Book

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This post by John Kremer originally appeared on his Book Marketing Bestsellers site.

The sooner your write a book, the better (for you and your business). You can certainly write a book within the next 60 days!

Here are 37 reasons why you should write a book.

 

Make money. You can make money not only by selling your book, but also by selling all the ancillary products and services you can offer.

Money is often the key motivator for many authors, but it certainly isn’t the only reason why you should write a book.

 

Change lives. Books can enlighten, educate, inspire, inform, and entertain. They can and do change lives.

Everyone has at least one story of a book that changed their lives. What book changed your life? Now, write one to change other people’s lives.

 

Sell a product. Use your book to help promote another product, whether a real world product or an online information product. Books can help you sell all your other products and services. Seed your book with the stories of your other products and services. Include case studies, success stories, examples of failure and success.

Books can sell your products and services faster and easier than anything else. Books allow you to showcase what you do, how well you do it, and how your customers benefit from what you offer.

 

Build a career. There’s no better way to build a career than to start by writing a book. Books open doors. Books get respect. Books get you promotions. And books get you job offers, again and again.

 

Boost your credibility. Nothing establishes your authority better than a book. Your book instantly boosts your credibility as a doer, as an expert, as a celebrity, as an authority. Of course, it has to be a good book, a great book, an extraordinary book. The more extraordinary, the more your credibility will grow!

 

Read the full post on Book Marketing Bestsellers.

 

On Becoming A Writer

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This post by Jayaprakash Sathyamurthy originally appeared on Former People: A Journal of Bangs and Whimpers on 4/25/14.

There are two stories that kicked off what I like to think of as my writing career. The first is Aranya’s Last Voyage, which won a short story collection held by the Deccan Herald in 2009. I had talked myself into giving up writing – do all writers do this from time to time or just the whiney ones like me? – but I’d had this story in the back of my mind for a long time and decided to take a chance and write it for the contest. It was based on a dream that I had had a long time ago – I still remember the house in Jayanagar where I was at the time. My first attempt to turn the dream into a story had been a science fiction story, but this time around I found a register that was better suited to what I wanted to do. With ‘Aranya’, just the act of naming the main character seemed to make things fall into place. Even though I gave my character an Indian name, he is not an Indian and the story is not set in our world. But using an Indian name gave me a link to the character. Also, Aranya means ‘forest’ and while there are no forests in the story, the imagery made me think of sages in jungle ashrams, and helped build up a picture of a certain kind of wise, austere and diligent man. I remember writing the story in a few intense bursts. Once it was done, I did very little revision before sending the story off. I’d always balked at finishing my stories because of the sheer length I imagined they had to be, but the contest’s word limit – under 5000 words – helped me focus on just getting the beginning, middle and end of the story in place. Learning to finish was the hardest lesson for me to learn, and the most important ability that separates a writer from someone who just kind of wants to write. Winning the contest made me feel like my notions that I could write well and tell an interesting story were maybe not just self-delusion.asdf

 

Click here to read the full post on Former People: A Journal of Bangs and Whimpers.

 

Make The Music You Make

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This post by John Vorhaus originally appeared on Writer Unboxed on 3/27/14.

I’m addressing the kids today, and if you’re not one, but know someone who is, won’t you please pass this along? (If you find it worthy, I mean.) I’m hoping to help your young peers understand what to expect as they walk the writer’s road.

I was a pack rat of words long before computers came along. I filled journal after journal with tiny, tense, Bic-penned attempts to master the mere act of putting words on the page. What I wrote was so stupid! So self-absorbed and questiony. Why am I here? What is my purpose? What do I have to do to get laid? I hated almost everything I wrote almost as soon as I wrote it. I didn’t know the first thing about story, and that’s what galled me most of all. My writing went nowhere, and I knew it. But I didn’t stop for the same reason you don’t stop; for the same reason junkies don’t stop. We’ve chosen our art, or it’s chosen us, and now we have to deal.

So I kept filling the pages of the horrible journals (filling, primarily, unlined black hardbound books that, because I am a pack rat of words, rest in the eaves of my very garage even as we speak). I discovered my first rule of writing: Write what you can write, or, more broadly, make the art you can make. And don’t lament the art that lies presently beyond your grasp. Presently that will change.

I had to write the horrible journals to write myself out of the horrible journals.

I had to start somewhere.

 

Click here to read the full post on Writer Unboxed.

 

I Didn't Get The Job, So I Wrote A Book

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This post by Caleb Pirtle III originally appeared on Venture Galleries on 3/16/14.

There was only one job I ever wanted.

I didn’t get it.

I tried more than once.

Everyone smiled and said thank you for applying and we’re glad you would like to work for us, but, no, we don’t need you.

The newspaper, it seemed, could do quite well without me.

I knew from the time I realized the difference between a subject and a predicate that I wanted to be a writer.

Growing up on an East Texas farm, I read everything I could get my hands on and I got my hands on everything I could find that had a front cover, back cover, and a bunch of words stuck in between.

I spent so much time crawling through the book shelves at the Kilgore Public Library that I became part of the furniture, and one day, I looked up from the printed page of another Hardy Boy Mystery and had two thoughts that would forever change my life.

Reading stories is good.

Writing stories is better.

 

Click here to read the full post on Venture Galleries.