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.
When you educate a girl, you kick-start a cycle of success. It makes economic sense. It makes social sense. It makes moral sense. But, it seems, it's not common sense yet.
Travel is rich with learning opportunities, and the ultimate sourvenir is a broader perspective.
Within the confines of the lecture hall, no other virtue exists but plain intellectual integrity.
The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a know how (mise au point) of the book as a vital function.
Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.
Instead of going to Paris to attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won't come out for twenty years, if you really wish to learn.
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