Status Updates From Pity the Reader: On Writing...

“Breakfast of Champions isn’t a threat to commit suicide, incidentally. It’s my promise that I’m beyond that now. Which is something for me. I’m used to think of it as a perfectly reasonable way to avoid delivering a lecture, to avoid a deadline, to not pay a bill, to not got to a cocktail party.”

“Could his parents have helped themselves or were they programmed by their chemistry and their own upbringings to behave as they did? Is it possible for anyone to transcend his or her own chemistry and programming?”

“You do not have to experience death or destruction or agony to write. You simply have to care about something.”

1 Make a commitment
2 Trust date, your Fairy Godmother Collaborator
3 Tell the truth
4 Keep on truckin’
5 Surrender perfection

“Surrendering perfection happens, more or less, to all writers….
He had to sacrifice his dream of what the book might be for the sake of what he could in fact now deliver…

Writers can’t write great things all the time. You can do the best you can, then you have to move on. Otherwise you’ll end up writing the same book your whole life.”

“We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.”

“Be kind to yourself. Give yourself room. There are years to go. Don’t pummel yourself with expectation. Go easy. Your material will eventually find its way to voice.”

“A culture can contain fatal poisons…a respect for firearms, for example….”

Rules:
1 Find a subject you care about
2 Do not ramble
3 Keep it simple
4 Have the guts to cut
5 Sound like yourself
6 Say what you mean to say
7 Pity the readers

“Every writer feels inept. Even Kurt Vonnegut. Just stick to your chair and keep on typing.”