Letters to a Young Writer: Some Practical and Philosophical Advice

We get our voice from the voices of others. Read promiscuously. Imitate, copy, but become your own voice.

A writer is an explorer. She knows she wants to get somewhere, but she doesn’t know if the somewhere even exists yet. It is still to be created. A Galápagos of the imagination. A whole new theory of who we are. Don

The quiet lines matter as much as the noisy ones.

We are being bought off by our affair with the contemporary drug of choice: ease.

In the end, the only things worth doing are the things that might possibly break your heart.

So, leave the cynics be. Out-cynic them. Step into that elsewhere. Believe that your story is bigger than yourself. In

The only true way to expand your world is to inhabit an otherness beyond ourselves. There is one simple word for this: empathy. Don’t let them fool you. Empathy is violent. Empathy is tough. Empathy can rip you open. Once you go there, you can be changed. Get ready: they will label you sentimental. But the truth is that the cynics are the sentimental ones.

Failure is good. Failure admits ambition. Failure admits bravery. Failure admits daring. It requires courage to fail and even more courage to know that you're going to fail...And in the end there's only one real failure - and that's the failure to be able to fail. Having tried is the true bravery.

Stories matter. They send our kids to war. They open up our pockets. They break our hearts.

you soon find out how loud the silence really is. everything unsaid leads eventually to what is said.

In the end you should probably know your characters as well as you know yourself. Not only what they had for breakfast this morning, but what they wanted to have for breakfast.