Quotations of the Week: On Writing

This week ahead will be a writing week; I hope. I need to really buckle myself down after resting (or attempting to rest--my sleep patterns have been wonky, to say the least) for the past few weeks and force my fingers to dance among the keys and produce some decent writing.

I'm still working on my teen novella--I have thirty-seven chapters completed and will probably end up with fifty or so when I'm done. They're short chapters, though--only 2500 words or so, which seems to work best for the main venue I'm posting them. I'm churning out a new chapter every 4-5 days; I was hoping for twice a week but that isn't happening yet.

And I want to keep up with this blog and the other blogs I write for; I have some major work to do on our community garden blog. I need to design a new header, write some new posts, and update photographs. I also have some blog posts I need to write here that I've jotted down in my Kindle Notes as the ideas have struck.

But my major project, the main one I want to make considerable progress upon this summer, is to complete at least a full rough draft of the MLA Research Essay book I'm writing for Brave Writer. I'm writing it directly to high school students, guiding them through the entire process of planning, researching, drafting, and producing a 5-10 page college-level research essay according to the newest MLA (Modern Language Association) format.

I also have a meeting on Tuesday night with our local Writers' Workshop. We'll meet to share a couple of pages of our work, giving and receiving comments, suggestions, and encouragement to one another as we seek to hone our craft, becoming more effective communicators of the written word.

So with much writing ahead of me this week, I thought I'd post a few of my favorite writing quotations. The first two of these I've posted in the past, but they're so wonderful that I simply couldn't resist!

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
--Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."
--William Wordsworth

"Don't tell me the moon in shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
--Anton Chekov

So as I go forth to write my little fingers raw, I hope for a productive week ahead for me, and for you all as well!


On the writing journey with you,