One of the nice things about being at home is that I can go through all the old stuff that I didn’t take with me to college. You know, all that stuff from high school that got thrown into a box when I left on my mission and has been gathering dust for a few years.
As I was looking through the stuff, I found a bunch of little slips of paper and notes in various well-worn pocket sized notebooks. They contain little bits of philosophical thoughts and writing advice that I jotted down back when I was a high school freshman. THAT was a long time ago!
At first, I didn’t want to read it, but when I did, I found out that a lot of the stuff is actually pretty good. Here is some of it:
Before writing, one must know that one’s satisfaction in the writing comes not from external sources, such as popularity, acceptance by a publisher, or remarks made about the finished product. One’s satisfaction in one’s writing must come FROM the writing.
Perhaps we need stories so that we can look at things and treat them as suggestions instead of absolute truth; to read things as fiction may help us pull out the facts.
The essence of a question is not in the pursuit of its answer, but in the curiosity and imagination of the one who pursues the question.
It’s propositions and ideas that make up how we see and act, and imagination is the single most important faculty in conceptualizing [developing] these.
List of Wants and Desires:
- I want to learn how to write clearly and articulately
- I want to express my thoughts
- I want to learn how to write better than I can walk
- I want to write as if it’s play, not work
- I want to shake off my perfectionist foundation of myself like an old, wet coat
- I want to be able to open up peoples minds to new realms of thought and imagination with a single statement
- I want to be present
You see all the ways things can go wrong. Now, broaden your vision and see all the ways things can go right.
How can you possibly doubt that which you understand not if the truth is what you seek for?
Either you know what you’re talking about, or you say it so easily that you end up finding out.
It seems that there must be some sort of law that says you can never know exactly why you do some of the things you do; the more light I shed on myself the more is hid in its shadow.
Cynicism never increases understanding.
Always leave something for the reader to “marvel at,” with every bit revealed. The last bit should capture the essence of virtue and humanity, and make a bold statement of them.
Never lose eagerness, never be discouraged, never be slave to perfection.
Don’t conclude; expose.
It can always be better, but better is relative.
Are you a writer or a critic? or even a cynic? Change! You can’t critique something that hasn’t been written. The best is not always perfect.
Here’s a funny one:
Sometimes in order to be able to “not do” you have to “do,” but you can’t do that which you must “do” if you’re “doing” that which you “must not do.”
“I don’t like half of you half as much as I should like…”
Moving on:
Don’t write about what you are unsure about, but make things flexible so that they may bend with the developing plan.
It’s much more important to make a mistake than to not. We learn from mistakes.
Do all to let creativity loose while you write; be relaxed and inventive!
In response to the quote: Everything in Fiction is False: If you can feel it, it exists.
Don’t be afraid of losing something you haven’t got yet, and you’ll be quite alright.
There you go. What happened to these little slips of paper, you may ask? Well, the next year, while I was right in the middle of the awkward teenage years, I got really self conscious about my writing, threw everything I’d been working on in eighth and ninth grade out the window (including two novels that had reached 100+ pages), stuffed all these little slips of paper into a folder somewhere and tried to forget about them. I haven’t read them ever since–until now.
It’s surprising to realize that they aren’t full of crap like I thought they were. Some of them are probably more accurate (or more well-written) than others, and there are some embarrassing ones that I didn’t put up here, but yeah, these ones aren’t all that bad.
Hope you liked them!
