• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Thought for the Day A writer never....

Paul Whybrow

Full Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2015
Location
Cornwall, UK
LitBits
0
A writer never finds the time to write. A writer makes it. If you don’t have the drive, the discipline, and the desire, then you can have all the talent in the world, and you aren’t going to finish your book.

Nora Roberts

iu
 
A writer never finds the time to write. A writer makes it. If you don’t have the drive, the discipline, and the desire, then you can have all the talent in the world, and you aren’t going to finish your book.

Nora Roberts

iu
Yep. When I told my mother (who used to write a lot--essays and scripts for a TV show) I was closing my interpretation business to focus on writing, her one comment was, "Well, you've certainly got the discipline for it." If I didn't treat writing as a business and force myself to 'go to work' and work to deadlines, I'd still be pottering away at that first novel (especially now I'm only writing part time again).
 
200 NOVELS? WOW! And I've never heard of her... or her books. But I've heard of Gone With the Wind and Margaret Mitchell wrote precious little else. Which goes to show- is it worth spleening your guts out when just one book will achieve what two hundred don't?
And that is exactly it, Eva.

Books are products to shift, the same as boxes of cornflakes, and then there are the standouts. Even the great writers often have just the one really great, standout story in them. Everything else they write is a paler re-hash, and now they are wearing a collar, because the great machine wants feeding, for money for entertainment. Not knocking it. But it's something different.
 
And that is exactly it, Eva.

Books are products to shift, the same as boxes of cornflakes, and then there are the standouts. Even the great writers often have just the one really great, standout story in them. Everything else they write is a paler re-hash, and now they are wearing a collar, because the great machine wants feeding, for money for entertainment. Not knocking it. But it's something different.
Yes, I imagined it to be so. Pity. because that downgrades the title of "Writer" to very little more than a clerk. When we think of the great stories that "real" writers have written, I feel this system does nothing but impoverish the world with the lust for dollars.
 

Further Articles from the Author Platform

Latest Articles By Litopians

  • After 65 Decembers
    . In August, he smiled at the memories of 65 Decembers, and put away his razor. . Throughout Septemb ...
  • Sunnyside: A Man Without a Country
    I had good reason to believe Poland was “my” country; cashiers in Polish grocery stores would sp ...
  • Hooks
    It’s the word I keep encountering again and again when listening to interviews with agents and pub ...
  • Not an Ode to Howl
    I am privileged to belong to the Thursday Ladies of Letters, a writers’ group in Kota Kinabalu. It ...
  • Still Singing Those Songs
    I caught a sad news item concerning one of my music icons: Jimmy Cliff, who died at the age of 81… ...
  • Livers, and Maybe Gizzards Too
    American street food keeps getting re-invented: oysters, tripe soup, and chicken gizzards get replac ...
  • If Genres Were Dating
    Sci-fi’s office, its walls lined with the concept art of unbuilt cities. The Director watches Sci- ...
What Goes Around
Comes Around!
Back
Top