- “Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything.” (Horace)
- “The incurable itch of writing possesses many.” (Juvenal)
- “He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his work, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.” (John Ruskin.)
- “The excellency of every art is its intensity.” (John Keats)
- “Great artists need great clients.” (Artist I.M. Pei.)
- “It seems to me that the writers who have the power of revelation are just those who, in some particular part of life, have seen or felt considerably more than the average run of intelligent beings…The great difference, intellectually speaking, between one man and another is simply the number of things they can see in a given cubic yard of the world.” (Gilbert Murray.)
- “High but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence.” (Catherine Cox.)
- “I think if you’re going to write, you’re going to write and nothing will stop you.” (William Faulkner.)
- “It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.” (John Steinbeck.)
- “The essential factor of development of expertise is the accumulation of increasingly complex patterns in memory.” (Andreas Lehman.}
- “Gifts like genius, I often think, means only an infinite capacity for taking pains.” (Jane E. Hopkins)
- “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon one can never resist or understand.” (George Orwell)
- “It is through art and through art only, that we realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.” (Oscar Wilde)
- “If I set out to sculpt a standing man and it becomes a lying woman I know I am making art.” (Henry Moore.)
- “The whole function of the artist in the world is to be a seeing and feeling creature; to be an instrument of such tenderness and sensitiveness, that no shadow, no hue, no line, no instantaneous and evanescent expression of the visible things around him, nor any of the emotions they are capable of conveying to the spirit which has been given him, shall either be left unrecorded, or fade…The work of his life is two-fold only; to see, to feel.” (John Ruskin.)
- “I am just a man in the position of waiting to see what the imagination is going to do next.”(Saul Bellow.)
© 2025 David J. Rogers
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All writers are equipped with a good memories, but Thomas Wolfe’s memory was astonishing. Because of it he was able with ease to recall events, people, and places in stunning detail. That was his strength. His weakness was an inability to restrain the deluge of words that poured out of him from evening to dawn as he wrote, or when he spoke, and he simply, despite himself, had no ability to stay within the requirements of writing a saleable novel. He had no concept of how to write such a book and needed the help of his editor, the legendary Maxwell Perkins of Scribner’s, who at the same time was the editor of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, two other difficult clients.
No writer in the nineteen thirties–or even now–could write with the beauty of Thomas Wolfe’s prose. His reputation after his death suffered because of the perceived formlessness and verbiage of his writing in an age when critics preferred tight structure and economy of language–short sentences and short episodes, and highly-focused scenes rather than the volume and torrents of Wolfe’s language. Once considered by Nobel Prize winners William Faulkner and Sinclair Lewis to be America’s finest writer, and in the past extremely popular with readers and critics, Wolfe is now almost never read–unfortunately in my opinion, if one is interested in being inspired by the brilliance of written expression. Hard as you look, you will not find Thomas Wolfe–once thought a towering genius–in current anthologies of American literature.
Given the gift of exceptional powers of 
A sparrow flutters its wings just above the grass,
Writing is a time-consuming process of self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-expression that may satisfy a writer’s deepest needs. Some writers find that nothing can compete with, nothing can replace, the writer’s joy of creating. Many writers so saturate themselves with their work that it becomes a need as strong as sleep, sometimes stronger. Many writers think, “This writing that I am doing is essential to my fulfillment and well-being. At times I may be so involved I will forget to eat. I will forget to make love. I will block out distractions. I will arrange a life-style and personal habits and routines to accommodate my writing.”
Some writers do consider writing the most important role in their life and give other roles short shrift. Many writers would agree with Katherine Anne Porter who said that the “thing” between her and writing was the strongest bond she had ever had—stronger than any bond she had ever had with any person or activity. 
Here it seems appropriate to talk about my Law of Give Up to Get. The Law of Give Up to Get means simply that to get something important in life, you must give up something else. Gripe all you want, rail at the gods, and wish it weren’t so, but you have no choice. In the long run, perhaps you can have everything you desire. But at any one time, to get A you’ll have to give up B. To get X you must give up Y, and maybe you might have to give up Z too. To write, you have no choice but to give up something else—maybe more than one thing. That’s a law, the way life works: to achieve this, you’ll have to give up that—time, energy and other resources spent doing other things, attaining other satisfactions.
Are there any roles in your life that can be supported with a smaller investment of time, energy, and other resources so that you can devote more time to writing? Are there any roles currently in your life you might dispense with?
Every memoirist, (as well as every writer of fiction and personal essays and every poet and playwright) should strive to make that attainable talent to evoke the past a part of their repertoire of skills. They can then call on that talent every day as they compose, and it will bring their writing vividly to life.
There were not enough living room chairs to go around when the full family came over, but there were the dining room chairs to carry in and also for an overflow crowd there were gray metal fold-up chairs stenciled on the back in white “Property of Ebenezer Baptist Church.” Aunt Sarah stored them in the hall closet hidden behind her prized full-length fur coat, and was embarrassed for strangers to see them, for fear they believe the impossible, but conceivable–that she had pilfered the chairs from that house of God.
On a kitchen wall, above the old serviceable stove, was fastened an Elgin clock that ran fast, forcing everyone to subtract twenty-two minutes a day if they wished for some reason to be accurate, and in the corner of the living room, close to the large drafty window fronting Austin Avenue, was an impressive century- old grandfather clock whose big bronze pendulum, to the entire family’s collective memory, had never moved.
If you are to be a writer who will be recognized, you must have faith that you have been created to be a writer, that writing is a destiny toward which your life has been aimed. Virginia Wolf and Toni Morison felt that way, and James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, and Ernest Hemingway. Many writers we haven’t heard of yet, but will, also feel that way. The faith that you are fated to be a writer is a writer’s first requirement. You must believe that it is when you are writing that you’re doing what you were brought into the world to do.
History shows that writers who will amount to anything also all have an attitude of “seriousness” about their work and their lives: “This is my only life; I am not playing games. I try to write every day. I strive to get better and better still and will do that all my life.”
As a writer you must be true to your awesome potential–must be in fact what you are potentially. If you are not doing enough with your gifts, your conscience lets you know. The conscience of a writer asks, “Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Have I become what I should have become? If I have not become what I should have become, what will I do now?” Your writer’s conscience is the voice that calls you to be the person you are fully prepared to be, the uniquely talented writer you have been created to be.
had, but doesn’t. It is a highly-regarded journal and would enhance any serious writer’s reputation to appear in it. That journal had published other pieces of Kathy’s in the past during her particularly prolific period when work poured out of her and was in demand by editors and readers. Some of her books were being published at the time, and many of her articles appearing in magazines were achieving record readership scores.
I am talking about the difference between writers whose overriding goal is to see their work in print–a Publication Focus–contrasted with writers whose overriding goal stops short of publication in which they are not interested. They are concerned solely with generating what is in their judgment the highest possible quality text–a Production Focus. The latter are more than contented to produce works they are proud of without seeing them published.
matters to them is that the works they produce be the best they have the skills to produce. They believe that because they are not interested in publishing but in producing the highest quality work they can, they are more creative and do better work than they would were they competing with others to see their work in print, and there are grounds for that belief.
produced was then graded by professionals–seasoned painters grading the paintings, experienced writers the writing, etc. The results were significant in that no matter what the reward was or when it was given, if the subjects thought they were working for external rewards, even a little trinket, and not for fun and pleasure, they became less creative. But when they were light-hearted and fooling around and no external reward was involved, they were more creative and their work was better.
a clear, informative, and entertaining way concepts that were unfamiliar to western thinking. It was a challenge because the concept of the book was totally new and original. Every day’s work of many hours was fulfilling, I didn’t spend a second thinking about how my book would do in the stores, only about the book’s clarity and how useful I could make it and how inviting it would be for readers. It was a highly successful and profitable book and my ambitions for the next book I began were high. But I found my thoughts losing focus. They often wandered away from the book’s content and style and how to satisfy the reader to where I would build the new house the new book’s royalties would bring me and the kind of cars I would buy. Both books received many accolades and made best seller lists. But whereas I wouldn’t change a single word of the first book, I live with the knowledge that the second book could have been better.
“One day I seemed to shut a door between me and all publishers. I said to myself, ‘Now I can write.” He started working on The Sound and the Fury, “thinking of books, publication, only in the sense in saying to myself, I wont (sic) have to worry about publishers liking or not liking this at all.”
writing every day. Most of them quit because of the heavy, depressing weight of too many failures and too few–if any–successes and the toll of failures on one’s 
bored. Just as children do that, writers can do something remarkable. As fully absorbed as children, they can work on perfecting a single paragraph forty or fifty times without experiencing a moment of boredom while people who are not writers and think that one draft is sufficient are astonished that such a feat is possible. The conclusion of Amabile’s experiments was that a playful approach like that of children increases the likelihood of producing creative results, and that pursuing external rewards diminishes the person’s creativity.
themselves) which Production Writers experience has been shown to improve the quality of the work that is produced. That is why so many famous writers think that they, and no one else, are the best judge of their work and why so many of them ignore or don’t ask for the advice of editors. Who enjoys being evaluated? Writers often dread evaluations, and evaluations negatively affect the writer’s mood and thus the quality of work that is produced. A Production Writer may ask for editorial assistance–to be helped–but not to be evaluated.
A writer begins with a talent. Talent is the raw material from which a writer’s career is shaped. Doing well what others find difficult is talent. It is not possible to describe the complete, complex structure of knowledge and skills the talented writer has acquired. The best predictor of future success isn’t just time spent writing, but the amount of time devoted to improving not just this skill or that skill, but the specific skills which are the most essential if a person is to become excellent--those ten or so necessary abilities they must possess if they hope to excel. Developing those skills is the first focus of a person on the Writer’s Way. Skills are taught–by a teacher, or a mentor, or they are 
contentment. “There is a blessed peace in a retreat that happens to suit my fraught nature…I arrive in a heaven…and I sink immediately in a sort of peace from life that I don’t seem to be able to find anywhere else” (Lynn Freed).
Then, possibly without being aware of how it happened, out of the act of writing more frequently, acquiring knowledge of effective writing, involving yourself in the writing world, enduring at times frustration, suffering, and pain you wouldn’t have had were you not a writer, and growing in 
Writing as a Way opens up new facets of your being that you might not be aware of. You write regularly over an extended period of time–one year, five, ten, thirty, or fifty. It’s writing that you think most about and talk with other writers about and possibly bore your loved ones speaking about. Writing as a Way becomes an indispensable part of your daily and weekly life.
When you’re writing, you’re focused. Your mind is sharp, crisp. Your thoughts don’t wander. You’re not thinking of anything else. A headache disappears. Worry about the rent dissolves. You forget about yourself, almost as though you’ve stopped existing except in the words you’re putting so carefully on the screen before you. You may be working on four, five, or six projects simultaneously, moving from one to another as the mood strikes, each project requiring different talents. When people don’t recognize the value and quality of your writing, your faith in yourself helps you persist. Poet Stephen Spender said, “It is evident that faith in their work, mystical in intensity, sustains poets.”
The most distinguishing quality of creative people is a persistent and enthusiastic absorption in their work, in spite of any frustration and suffering they may endure. Creative talent is indistinguishable from passion and intensity. You can hardly call yourself creative without them. One reason writers who are experts are more accomplished than writers who are very good but not great is that experts are more passionate about writing and spend more hours at it, working six hours while less capable writers work two hours. The only way you could keep some people from writing would be to break their fingers.
It is not unusual for writers and other artists fully absorbed in their work to be for that time in a 
In the arts, 
Through writing you’re drawing out of yourself all that is in you–all the knowledge you’ve acquired, all the experiences you’ve lived through, what your emotions are, what skills you bring, and what you aspire to become. You gain meaning in life and a better understanding of who you are through performing writing. You have the sense that you are a person who is able to reveal important things. Delving deeply, expressing to the world what treasures you have found, you are now an artist, a remarkable status you have achieved by following the Way of the Writer.
Have a need for self-expression and self-disclosure. Good writers reveal themselves in their work. Readers want writers to reveal themselves. A novel, for example, enables authors to convey a wealth of information that expresses them. Your writing, even the way you turn a phrase and the metaphors you use (why did you use an image of a fish then instead of a train?) and your vocabulary and points of view, tell the reader what you’re like. Writers have a need to discover exactly what they are thinking by writing it out, and then to artfully communicate it to the reader who wants to know.
Possess 
Have a strong concern for your 
Be able to muster an abundance of physical strength and stamina. Often it’s the end of writers’ endurance that stops their working day. Novelist Thomas Wolfe would turn in manuscripts a million words long . He claimed that the physical demands on the writer made the writer’s life seem to him to be the hardest life man has ever known.
Have or develop a business sense. You have a career to manage and responsibilities and expenses. Study marketing and salesmanship–read. Take business classes.
davidjrogersftw 