QuoteProject
Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.
Wallace Stegner
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Writers should focus on the act of writing rather than labeling themselves as writers too soon.

This quote emphasizes the importance of the writing process for young writers. It suggests that rather than getting caught up in the identity of being a writer, they should concentrate on honing their craft and developing their skills through practice. This approach fosters creativity and growth without the pressure of self-identification that could hinder their development.

Themes

WritingCreativityYoung WritersEncouragementPractice

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be shared in a writing workshop to motivate students.

More from Wallace Stegner

That is all the National Parks are about. Use, but do no harm.
Wallace StegnerRead
Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.
Wallace StegnerRead
Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.
Wallace StegnerRead
I was shaped by the west and have lived most of my life in it, and nothing would gratify me more than to see it in all its subregions and subcultures both prosperous and environmentally healthy, with a civilization to match its scenery.
Wallace StegnerRead
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.
Wallace StegnerRead
No place is a place until things that have happened in it are remembered in history, ballads, yarns, legends, or monuments. Fictions serve as well as facts.
Wallace StegnerRead

Similar quotes

A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.
Anthony HechtRead
Let not a single day pass without your learning a verse, half a verse, or a fourth of it, or even one letter of it; nor without attending to charity, study and other pious activity.
ChanakyaRead
The difference between the novice and the master is simply that the novice has not learnt, yet, how to do things in such a way that he can afford to make small mistakes. The master knows that the sequence of his actions will always allow him to cover his mistakes a little further down the line. It is this simple but essential knowledge which gives the work of a master carpenter its wonderful, smooth, relaxed, and almost unconcerned simplicity.
Christopher AlexanderRead
You have to dream. We all have to dream. Dreaming is OK. Imagine me teaching from space, all over the world, touching so many peoples lives. Thats a teachers dream! I have a vision of the world as a global village, a world without boundaries. Imagine a history teacher making history!
Christa McauliffeRead
When you have all these new police officers and resource officers coming into schools, what I'm worried is going to happen is we're going to increase the school-to-prison pipeline, which disproportionately affects students of color and lower social status.
David HoggRead
We do not believe in the educative power of words and commands alone, but seek cautiously, and almost without the child's knowing it, to guide his natural activity.
Maria MontessoriRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.