"Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words."
Edgar Allan Poe (via larmoyante)
"We only write about two feelings: one is the first day of summer when you and all of your friends are standing on the edge of a cliff watching the sun set and being overcome with all of your hopes and dreams at once. The other is when you’re walking alone in the rain and realize you will be alone forever."
The Drums (via aurelle)
"You have to have something worth saying and then the ability to say it - writing’s a double skill, really."
Iain Banks (via writingquotes)
"Isn’t it funny? I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that’s something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It’s hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but hatred cradles you."
Janet Fitch, White Oleander (via lazyteen)
"The best sentences orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail. They remain the test, whether or not to read something. The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold. In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil. The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. Style and personality are irrelevant. They can be formal or casual. They can be tall or short or fat or thin. They can obey the rules or break them. But they need to contain a charge. A live current, which shocks and illuminates."
Jhumpa Lahiri, My Life’s Sentences (via larmoyante)
writing tip #392:
always make it obvious which love interest the mc will end up with from the beginning. it’s a romance not a brain teaser
Semicolons Are Sexy
They are; they fucking are. Please accept from me this sweet, overflowing bouquet of audacious semicolons… (;;;;;;;;;) I would fuck the shit out of any girl who knew how to use a semicolon correctly. No; that’s not true. That’s too crass. I would make sweet gentle Antonio Banderas-style love to any girl who knew how to correctly use a semicolon; with quilted sheets, and flickering candles. I would get up in the middle of our passionate lovemaking to tenderly bring her glasses of water because she’d be thirsty from all our passionate lovemaking. That’s how strongly I feel about semicolons.
Oh, imaginary girl who also feels so strongly about semicolons! Dumb people say that we no longer need to use semicolons; but they are wrong. Critics say these negative things about semicolons; ”They are old-fashioned,” “They are middle-class,” “They are optional,” “They are mysteriously connected to pausing,” “They are dangerously addictive.” These people are fuckheads. Fuck all that noise, I say.
Oh, not for you. Not for you and me! Not for us, the phallic thrusting of the “em-dash.” Not for us, the excessive white space of the colon. No, for us, only the blank dot, symbolizing sexy nothingness and the sexy void; the blank dot and the luscious curve of the comma, which symbolizes ripeness, growth, and also sex, because most things symbolize sex.
Oh, one day; my purely hypothetical darling. One day, we will meet. And even if you happen not to be a girl, but perhaps a very epicene David-Bowie-ish sort of skinny dude; well, I’ve never swung that way before, but if we both love semicolons so much, probably it will be okay; but one day, we will meet. Possibly on the avenue; we will meet. We will spread our hands. We will know one another. “Hello,” we will say. “Hello; what next?” we will say. And we will know; we will know what is next to come.
pop quiz: who went out on a date because the asker used a semicolon correctly, even though we had nothing in common? hint: it was me, i actually did that.
There should be an episode of Schoolhouse Rock about this.
another reminder.
the world is heavy
but your bones
(just a cubic inch)
can hold 19,000 lbsounce for ounce
they are stronger than steelatom for atom
you are more precious than diamondand stars have died
so that you may liveyou need to remember these things
when you say that you are weak
and worthless
"Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk."
Henry Jenkins, in Textual Poachers: Media Fans and Participatory Culture (via jaimelannister)
"Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe."
Stephen King, On Writing (via letswrite500)
