Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.
Interpretation
The quote encourages overcoming writer's block by writing anything, even if it's not the final piece.
Laini Taylor emphasizes the importance of taking action when faced with a creative block. Instead of getting paralyzed by the blankness of a page or screen, she suggests that writing about the challenges or scenes one is trying to create can help unlock creativity and lead to the desired expression. This approach not only alleviates the pressure of perfection but also serves as a warm-up to find one's voice and direction in writing.
In practice
This quote can be used in a writing workshop to encourage participants to overcome their fears of the blank page.
It’s like losing gravity and falling into space – the moment of pitching headlong when the endlessness of space asserts itself and there is no more down, only an eternity of up, and you realize you can fall forever and never run out of stars.
Kizzy wanted it all so bad her soul leaned half out of her body hungering after it, and that was what drove the goblins wild, her soul hanging out there like an untucked shirt.
When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.
Dialogue is the place that books are most alive and forge the most direct connection with readers. It is also where we as writers discover our characters and allow them to become real.
Happiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.
It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him.
Now, the education of our children is of national concern, and if they are not educated properly, it is a national calamity.
The reader's ear must adjust down from loud life to the subtle, imaginary sounds of the written word. An ordinary reader picking up a book can't yet hear a thing; it will take half an hour to pick up the writing's modulations, its ups and downs and louds and softs.
High-quality early-childhood programs and health coverage have expanded, and the number of mentoring relationships for at-risk youth has risen dramatically. That progress is encouraging, but it's not evenly distributed.
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.