Elisa Doucette > Elisa's Quotes

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“I’d been beguiled by the new technology—a toddler crawling toward a gun.”
― Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

“Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I need not be visibly odd. I could engage in the protocols that others followed and move undetected among them. And how could I be sure that other people were not doing the same - playing the game to be accepted but suspecting all the time that they were different?”
― Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project

“I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit. This might not be important. On the other hand, if you’re just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television’s electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If stone-sober people can fuck like they’re out of their minds—can actually be out of their minds while caught in that throe—why shouldn’t writers be able to go bonkers and still stay sane?”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“It’s extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn’t work. The fact that it doesn’t work every time should give you confidence, because it means you’re doing something that frightens others.”
― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

“She said some people were horizontally oriented, while others were vertical. Horizontally oriented people were concerned exclusively with what others think, with fitting in or impressing their peers. Vertically oriented people were obsessed only with some higher “truth,” which they believed in wholeheartedly and wanted to trumpet no matter who was interested. People who are horizontally oriented are phonies and sycophants, while those who are entirely vertically oriented lack all social skill—they’re the ones on the street shouting about the apocalypse. Normal people are in the middle, but veer one way or the other.”
― Adelle Waldman, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

“At that moment in her life, Elisa was, he realized, almost pathologically attracted not to status or money or good looks but to literary and intellectual potential.”
― Adelle Waldman, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

“I couldn’t write. I grew tense. I was strangled by my own ego, by my petty desire for what I perceived to be the literary brass ring. I was missing the point, of course. The reward is in the doing.”
― Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life

“Relationships needn’t be irrational to be valuable, romantic, and fulfilling.”
― Colin Wright, Some Thoughts About Relationships

“If you want to find fulfillment with another person, an ideal first step is to become personally, independently fulfilled.”
― Colin Wright, Some Thoughts About Relationships

“If you want to find fulfillment with another person, an ideal first step is to become personally, independently fulfilled. Depending on someone else to bring happiness to your life, zest to your day-to-day, and inspiration to your work, is handing off a lot of responsibility; it’s depending on your partner to make you complete.”
― Colin Wright, Some Thoughts About Relationships

“Your work tells tales.”
― Todd Henry, Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice

“When you are pouring yourself into your work and bringing your unique perspective and skills to the table, then you are adding value that only you are capable of contributing.”
― Todd Henry, Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice

“Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled with leather novels and chai tea. They talk about their “morning ritual” and how they “dress for writing” and the cabin in Big Sur where they go to “be alone”—blah blah blah. No one tells the truth about writing a book. Authors pretend their stories were always shiny and perfect and just waiting to be written. The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I am interested in people who swim in the deep end.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“I am here to tell you that you don’t have to. You don’t have to tell it or tweet it or Instagram it. You don’t have to put it in a book or share it with anyone who doesn’t feel safe and protective of your heart.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Later in life he reported that he had found his fame boring—not because it was immoral or corrupting, but simply because it was exactly the same thing every day. He was looking for something richer, more textured, more varied. So he dropped out.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“This is why we have to be careful of how we handle our fear—because I’ve noticed that when people try to kill off their fear, they often end up inadvertently murdering their creativity in the process.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“If inspiration is allowed to unexpectedly enter you, it is also allowed to unexpectedly exit you.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“Whatever you do, try not to dwell too long on your failures. You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing?”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“At this point, you have two choices: you can either remain stagnant, using the same methods and skills to tackle the work that’s in front of you and continuing on your present course, or you can intentionally return to Discovery phase and challenge yourself to develop a new skill or means of expression. If you do the former, you are likely to begin a slow decline into mediocrity and misery. If you do the latter, you will be uncomfortable for a while, but you will continue growing.”
― Todd Henry, Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice

“A compelling, authentic voice is rooted in a strong sense of identity.”
― Todd Henry, Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice

“You have to know what you believe, what you stand for, and what you’re willing to invest yourself in (fully) if you want your work to stand against the onslaught of skepticism and critique.”
― Todd Henry, Louder than Words: Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice

“Novels have intricate plots, verse has musical forms, history and biography enjoy the sheen of objective truth. In memoir, one event follows another. Birth leads to puberty leads to sex. The books are held together by happenstance, theme, and (most powerfully) the sheer, convincing poetry of a single person trying to make sense of the past.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

“I once heard Don DeLillo quip that a fiction writer starts with meaning and then manufactures events to represent it; a memoirist starts with events, then derives meaning from them.”
― Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir