When I tried to write my first story as an adult, the blank page staring back at me was scary. Why did I think that I could write something anyone would want to read? Dare I even try? On my travels, I discovered a quote which spoke to me, so I copied it out and pinned to the wall above my desk to see if it would help. It did. When I set up my study in my new home in Chicago, it was the first thing I wrote out and added to my noticeboard here too.
The quote?
“Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
~ Goethe
Since then, I have collected quotes that help me or strike a chord. After all, writing can be lonely. And writing a book takes a long time, and needs some encouragement. These days, many inspiring quotes fill my study walls. Here are some more of my favourites:
“A good part of the business of fiction is performed half-consciously, even sub-consciously. So I’ll do a little scene and then another little scene and try not to think of the extent of the task ahead.”
~ Hilary Mantel“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
~ Pablo Picasso“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
~ Roald Dahl“Not all those who wander are lost.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkein“Know yourself and go in swinging...”
~ Patrick Ness“Writing is at its best — always always always — when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer.”
~ Steven King“To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must write dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfume and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories—science fiction or otherwise. Which means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
~ Ray Bradbury
