“It's important, I think, for a writer of fiction to maintain an awareness of the pace and shape of the book as he's writing it. That is, he should be making an object, not chattering.” ThinkingShouldWritingImportantBookFictionAwarenessObjectsShapesPace Author:Thomas Perry
“Every sentence has its drumbeat. rhythm is one of the most powerful dimensions of language: it separates tribes, united families, soothes children, and shocks us into new awarenesses. Every good writer, marching to his or her own drumbeat, marks out a vibrational field as home territory. The cadences of our sentences carry echos of ancestry and influence as surely as the double helix that orchstrates the life of the body.” WritingChildrenHomeBodyLanguageUnitedPowerfulInfluenceAwarenessFieldsMarkVery GoodSentencesRhythmDimensionsShockMost PowerfulSongwritingTerritoryTribesAncestryGood WritersCadenceUnited Family Author:Marilyn Chandler McEntyre
“The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. Most of the writing today which is called fiction contains such a poverty of language, such triteness, that it is a shrunken, diminished world we enter, poorer and more formless than the poorest cripple deprived of ears and eyes and tongue. The writer's responsibility is to increase, develop our senses, expand our vision, heighten our awareness and enrich our articulateness.” WorldWritingEyeTodayLanguageFictionResponsibilityVisionPovertyRolesAwarenessEarsIncreaseTongueSensesDeprivedPoorestCripples Author:Anais Nin
“I'd love to write about my growing sexual awareness, but the press would turn it into something squalid.” WritingTurnsGrowingAwarenessPresses Author:Ken Livingstone
“As a white male in America, I have privilege. As a white male who happens to be an artist with a fan base, I have a platform to spread awareness about that privilege. However, songs about race and privilege are very difficult to A) write and B) dissect as a listener. They're heavy.” WritingHappensAmericaArtistSongDifficultWhiteRaceFansAwarenessMalesPrivilegeHeavySpreadPlatformsListeners Author:Macklemore
“Expose your life to real need. Visit a developing a country. Take a short term mission trip. Write an inmate, send a letter to a sponsored child, serve in the inner city, at a food bank, with a crisis pregnancy center. Make time for shut-ins, the elderly, the sick, the single-parents, the new believers. Just find one way you can make your awareness of your gift-graced life intersect with a real place of need - and Christ in us will do the rest.” WayNeedsWritingChildrenRealCountryParentTermChristCitiesAwarenessLettersSickCrisisMissionsBelieverOne WayDevelopingPregnancyShort TermElderlyMaking TimeInner CitySingle ParentInmatesMission TripFood Banks Author:Ann Voskamp
“Kafka's writings often display an insidious power to describe a wholly secular and "factical" world in which the eerie or "unheimlich" elements gang up behind or beneath the ego's awareness and immerse it in a waking dream of something Other, an alien world-order similar to ancient irrationalist cultures (in transition from primitivism to civilized mythos-culture).” WorldWritingSoulDreamOrderCultureBehindsAwarenessEgoElementsAncientAliensCivilizedTransitionWakingDisplaySecularGangWorld OrderInsidiousEerie Author:Kenny Smith
“The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye.” WritingDoeSeemsEyeRememberAwarenessAdultsObservationWanderFacultyOutlookLearnersRoving Book:The Mulberry Tree Source: The Mulberry Tree
“Most of us live our lives desperately trying to conceal the anguishing gap between our polished, aspirational, representational selves and our real, human, deeply flawed selves. Dunham lives hers in that gap, welcomes the rest of the world into it with boundless openheartedness, and writes about it with the kind of profound self-awareness and self-compassion that invite us to inhabit our own gaps and maybe even embrace them a little bit more, anguish over them a little bit less.” WorldWritingTryingHumansKindLittlesRealSelfBitsCompassionOur LivesAwarenessLittle BitSelf AwarenessEmbraceProfoundGapsInvitesAnguishFlawedBoundlessPolishedSelf CompassionReal Human Author:Maria Popova
“I don't want to write poems that are just really clear about how I'm aware of all the traps involved in writing poetry; I don't want to write fiction that's about the irresponsibility of writing fiction and I've thrown out a lot of writing that I think was ultimately tainted by that kind of self-awareness.” ThinkingWantWritingKindSelfFictionClearAwarenessInvolvedSelf AwarenessThrownTrapsWriting FictionWriting PoetryTaintedIrresponsibility Author:Ben Lerner
“Awareness of having better things to do with their lives is the secret to immunizing our children against false values--whether presented on television or in "real life." The child who finds fulfillment in music or reading or cooking or swimming or writing or drawing is not as easily convinced that he needs recognition or power or some "high" to feel worthwhile.” NeedsFeelsWritingChildrenRealLife IsValuesReadingSecretAwarenessTelevisionOur ChildrenCookingConvincedDrawingReal LifeRecognitionFulfillmentThings To DoSwimmingWorthwhileBetter Things To Do Book:Whole child, whole parent Source: Whole child, whole parent
“We are living in a renaissance of personal writing. People are rebalancing the impersonalization endemic to modern society with an increase in personal introspection. We have enough common psychology under our belts to know that psychology doesn't explain or heal everything and that it isn't the fulfillment of awareness, but its beginning. We are undergoing a shift in paradigms in which we are trying to develop new models for humanness and human responsibility. This is no small task. Our individual lives are placed under increasing pressure to respond adequately to both inner and outer change.” PeopleKnowsWritingTryingHumansEnoughIndividualCommonResponsibilityPsychologyModernAwarenessModelsTasksIncreasePressureHealFulfillmentIntrospectionBeltsParadigmRenaissanceModern SocietyHumannessIndividual LifeJournalingPersonal Writing Author:Christina Baldwin
“A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can't tell the dancer from the dance. It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body.” WayWritingStatesPlayBodyHappensActionFormUniverseGamesAwarenessMovementConsciousAthleteSuperiorsDancerStrokesParadigmInterferenceGood AthleteBody AwarenessSuperior Intelligence Author:Laozi
“We also write to heighten our own awareness of life... We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection... We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it...to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely... When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking... I feel I lose my fire and my color.” WorldFeelsWritingMomentsAbleSpeakLosesTeachRecordsFireOur LivesJourneyAwarenessColorTasteLonelyOur WorldLabyrinthShrinkingAwareness Of Life Author:Anais Nin
“We can't write a serious novel in the 21st century without acknowledging the inescapable self-awareness we're stuck with. The idea we're surrounded by falsehoods and lies. It's hard for the thinking person to believe in narratives. And yet we want some place to invest our belief.” ThinkingWantWritingBelievePersonsIdeasSelfHardLyingBeliefNovelCenturyAwarenessSeriousSelf AwarenessStuckNarrativeFalsehood21st CenturyThinking Person Author:Michael Helm
“Any musician with a slight level of self-awareness can be taught to write a 'good' song. A great song is completely original. It feels as if the performer is the only person who could bring it to life.” IfsFeelsWritingPersonsSelfSongLevelsAwarenessTaughtMusicianOriginalsSelf AwarenessPerformers Author:Greta Salpeter
“I want to say that what is cool about writing self-aware first person narrative is that the awareness is not necessarily the same awareness of the reader. I have a story coming out in the Paris Review and it's about a hipster. He think's he's self-aware, he's very introspective and analytical, but when you're reading it you can totally see through his self-analysis because you have a higher awareness than he does. I like playing with that too.” WritingReadingAwarenessIntrospectiveHipster Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.” WritingAliveAwarenessSacredMachineryUnwaveringBreakfast Of Champions Author:Kurt Vonnegut
“You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.” KnowsFeelsShouldWritingLooksRealMatterFeelingsSuccessfulAwarenessProseRelaxSensationsExposureInadequacyGhastlyFeelings Of Inadequacy Author:Will Self