JULY 4TH'S Insecure Writer's Support

IMPORTANT NOTE: MY CONTEST HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO JULY 15TH FOR THOSE JUST LEARNING OF IT!

July 4th is America's INDEPENDENCE DAY.

I want to help my writing friends become INDEPENDENT of fear

which is the chief cause of aspiring writers never writing the novel inside them.

Here are 23 (a mystic number in itself) quotations from authors much wiser than myself!


Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. —E.L. Doctorow


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 our what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. —Barbara Kingsolver


Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. —Gustave Flaubert


The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. —Mary Heaton Vorse


Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. -Anne Lamott


I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I’m one of the world’s great rewriters. I find that three or four readings are required to comb out the cliches, line up pronouns with their antecedents, and insure agreement in number between subject and verbs…My connectives, my clauses, my subsidiary phrases don’t come naturally to me and I’m very prone to repetition of words; so I never even write an important letter in the first draft. I can never recall anything of mine that’s ever been printed in less than three drafts. You write that first draft really to see how it’s going to come out. —James A. Michener

Fear of failure is the reason most often cited to explain why so many aspiring writers never realize their dreams. But I think it’s that same fear of failure that absolutely invigorates those who do push through—that is, the fear of not being heard. -Betsy Lerner


If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages. —William Campbell Gault


Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain. -Mark Twain



A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. —Sidney Smith



I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. -Ernest Hemingway


There is always the risk that you may disappoint yourself. That risk is there even for productive writers, as most writers don’t write as often as they would like. Because of this reality, you will need to practice self-forgiveness. —Eric Maisel


By writing much, one learns to write well. —Robert Southey


If we had to say what writing is, we would have to define it essentially as an act of courage. —Cynthia Ozick


Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up. —Jane Yolen


Please, don't torture me with cliches. If you're going to try to intimidate me, have the courtesy to go away for a while, acquire a better education, improve your vocabulary, and come back with some fresh metaphors. ― Dean Koontz (ODD HOURS)


Inspiration doesn’t descend like a lightning bolt from the gods. Inspiration comes instead from a steady breath, a solid foundation, and a commitment to the process. —Laraine Herring


Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. —Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)


Work inspires inspiration. Keep working. If you succeed, keep working. If you fail, keep working. If you are interested, keep working. If you are bored, keep working. —Michael Chrichton


Once we are aware of our fears, we are almost always capable of being more courageous than we think. Someone once told me that fear and courage are like lightning and thunder; they both start out at the same time, but the fear travels faster and arrives sooner. If we just wait a moment, the requisite courage will be along shortly. —Lawrence Block


A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than for others. —Thomas Mann


The secret of getting ahead is getting started. —Agatha Christie


At some point we must stop anticipating our journey and set sail. Willa Cather said that she wrote best when she stopped trying to write and began simply to remember. —Ralph Keyes (The Courage to Write)

A last word about writing:

“But once an idea for a novel seizes a writer...

well, it’s like an inner fire that at first warms you and makes you feel good but then begins to eat you alive, burn you up from within.

You can’t just walk away from the fire; it keeps burning. The only way to put it out is to write the book.”
― Dean Koontz, Lightning

“No one's life should be rooted in fear. We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are.”
― Dean Koontz, Life Expectancy

{Thanks to several of my friends who have talked about my contest yesterday, I am EXTENDING THE DEADLINE TO JULY 15TH to give those who've just learned of my contest a fair chance.}
Prepare yourselves for chills.