Third, for people who aren't doing it already, take classes - they're worthwhile. Workshops or classes - a workshop is where you do actually get feedback on your work, not just something where you go and sit for a day.
Interpretation
Engaging in classes or workshops provides valuable feedback and enhances learning.
Octavia Butler emphasizes the importance of actively participating in classes and workshops to improve one’s skills and receive constructive feedback. Rather than passive learning experiences, workshops allow individuals to engage with their work and benefit from the insights of others, making the learning process much more effective and enriching.
In practice
During a discussion on professional development, you might say, 'As Octavia Butler suggests, taking workshops is essential for gaining real feedback and improving your skills.'
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
I think that the training of architects allows you to see what will happen ten years ahead of time, or twenty. It's not guessing, it's not intuitive, it's based on research - and we may be wrong.
I come to writing the same way I come to teaching, which is that my goal is always to create life-long readers.
The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Read the kinds of things you want to write; read the kinds of things you would never write. Learn something from every writer you read.
Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.
Books are those faithful mirrors that reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.