Christian Freelance Writers Network
Musings on the business, craft, and joy of faith-filled writing
When you write, you should pretend that you, the writer, see something in the world that’s interesting, that you are directing the attention of your reader to that thing in the world, and that you are doing so by means of conversation.
Steven Pinker
Step 1: Wonder at something.
Step 2: Invite others to wonder with you.
Point at things, say, “whoa,” and elaborate.
Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist
I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.
– John D. Rockefeller
Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.
– Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.
2 Peter 1:5-7
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.
E.B. White
If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.
C.S. Lewis
If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.
Ecclesiastes 11:4 (The Living Bible)
In a profile I wrote of Christian musician Phil Keaggy, I could have told readers his mother was kind and loving. Instead, I briefly related something he shared in our interview: She warmed his pajamas on the radiator every night before he dressed for bed. That little detail showed her loving heart and kindness. No need for telling.
Joyce K. Ellis, Write with Excellence
“Ultimately, you have to sit down and start to write. And even if all you do is type out “I can’t write this morning; I can’t write this morning; oh, bother, I can’t write this morning,” that will sometimes prime the pump and get it started.”
Madeleine L’Engle, Madeleine L’Engle Herself (2001)
It takes a heap of living to make a writer. It doesn’t necessarily have to be physical action, either. It may be the lives other people have lived, close to you. But a steady flow of happenings, motives, emotions must pass through your mind into your subconscious, and must enter in a continuous stream to supply that certain something that lets you make stories real to the reader.
The important thing to remember is that your ability to write is like your bank account—you must keep putting in to have something there to take out.
Jane Littell, Writer’s Digest (May 1940)
“Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”
Jean Rhys, in a Paris Review interview
Creativity is often a matter of seeing things from a new perspective. Look around your home/workspace and imagine you’re an explorer hiking over that mountain of folders on your kitchen table, or imagine what that fly is thinking as it ambles across your keyboard. Take a microscopic view of your surroundings and see what interesting things come to mind.
Randy Petersen, The Joy of Working at Home
You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair—the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed. . . You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.
Stephen King, On Writing
Compete with yourself, not others. Invariably, when we compare ourselves to others, we rarely measure up. So change up this equation and compete with yourself. Define a personal best and see if you can surpass it. Early in my career as a staff writer for a daily newspaper, I needed to learn how to write and report as fast as possible. By competing with myself, I found that I could achieve a rate of one thousand words of original content in sixty minutes—a personal best. I impressed myself!
Tim Morgan, The Joy of Working at Home
