Five Classic Quotes By Writers On Writing

Writing Tip

Don’t overuse exclamation marks.

Use them:

• after an exclamation or interjection 
• to express a strong emotion 
• to express astonishment
• to indicate a command

Do not use them for:

• emphasis
• irony
• humour

From Writers Write

Famous Writers When They Were Young

Aldous Huxley
Ernest Hemingway
F.Scott Fitzgerald
Rudyard Kipling

Via Huffpost Culture UK Follow the link for more

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ~F.Scott Fitzgerald

Literary Birthday - 24 September

Happy Birthday, F. Scott Fitzgerald, born 24 September 1896, died 21 December 1940

My Top 12 F.Scott Fitzgerald Quotes on Writing

1. That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
2. You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
3. Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.
4. Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
5. Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.
6. All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.
7. Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.
8. Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre.
9. Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves—that’s the truth. We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives—experiences so great and moving that it doesn’t seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.
10. You can stroke people with words.
11. The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
12. Action is character.

Fitzgerald is regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s, he finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, Tender Is the Night, and his most famous, The Great Gatsby. 

by Amanda Patterson

From Writers Write

The Fitzgeralds

Joshua Landsman’s Sketchbook Ode to F.Scott Fitzgerald