Wordsmithy Quotes

“Be at peace with being lousy for a while. Chesterton once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. He was right. Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Pace yourself in your reading. A little bit every day really adds up. If you read during sporadic reading jags, the fits and starts will not get you anywhere close to the amount of reading you will need to do. It is far better to walk a mile a day than to run five miles every other month. Make time for reading, and make a daily habit of it, even if it is a relatively small daily habit.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“A lot of aspiring writers quote the right people, but they do so like Mary Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. They quote Austen like Mary quoted her eighteenth-century bromides, and were Austen here to see them do it, she'd slap them right into her next book, and it wouldn't be pretty.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“I believe firmly in plodding. Productivity is more a matter of diligent, long-distance hiking than it is one-hundred-yard dashing. Doing a little bit now is far better than hoping to do a lot on the morrow. So redeem the fifteen minute spaces. Chip away at it.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Know something about the world, and by this I mean the world outside of books. This might require joining the Marines, or working on an oil rig or as a hash slinger at a truck stop in Kentucky. Know what it smells like out there. If everything you write smells like a library, then your prospective audience will be limited to those who like the smell of libraries.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“The fact that you can't remember things doesn't mean that you haven't been shaped by them.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Your writing advances a particular view of the world. Pretending that it does't just confuses everybody, starting with you.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Collections do not leave the collector unaffected. The art of collecting results in a certain turn of mind.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“The independence of art from worldview and worldview concerns is a myth. Every work of art is produced within a framework of worldview assumptions.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“The brain is not a shoebox that 'gets full,' but rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use. The more you know, the more you can know.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Read constantly. Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write. Read until your brain creaks.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“You read widely to be shaped, not so that you might be prepared to regurgitate.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Read the kind of stuff you wish you could write.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Whenever two unbelievers quarrel, the may both say some very insightful things about the unsightly habits of the other.

The postmodernists are very good at pointing out the pretensions of the modernists. And the modernists are very good at pointing out the incoherence of the postmodernists.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“You have to have that rare combination of thick skin and a tender heart. Most writers get it backward and have a tender skin and a thick heart... Every critic, however ill-informed, represents a point of view which is likely not limited to just him... Sometimes you will disagree with your critic, but you can always gain from him.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Propaganda (things to be propagated) is inescapable. It is not *whether* certain values will be propagated, but rather, *which* values will be propagated.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Writing well is more than mechanics, but it is not less.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“You do not create ex nihilo. You rearrange and recombine. You are the same old flour and eggs in search of a new recipe.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“He who walks with the wise will be wise, Scripture saith, and he who walks with the witty will eventually start to pop off himself.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“There are two basic approaches to life- one in which the world is a world of scarcity, given to us by the skinflint god, and the other in which the world is a world of endless possibilities, bestowed on us by a loving Father.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Allusion is lovely, and experience with other forms of writing brings the ability to use that device pervasively. This in turn sets high expectations for the reader- in that you are expecting him to pick up on it- and this is a way of respecting your readers. And when you respect your readers, they will come to respect you.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Your deep interests should always have a dog-eared place on your nightstand.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Most of what is shaping you in the course of your reading you will not be able to remember. The most formative years of my life were the first five, and if those years were to be evaluated on the basis of my ability to pass a test on them, the conclusion would be that nothing important happened then, which would be false. The fact that you can’t remember things doesn’t mean that you haven’t been shaped by them.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Certain grammatical rules are arbitrary, but the need to have these arbitrary rules is not arbitrary.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Information can get from a professors lecture notes and into a student's notebook without passing through the mind of either.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“One of the elements of writing that is most delightful to the engaged reader is the element of surprise. And one of the ways to surprise the reader is to set up an expectation that you then veer away from it at the last moment. A stitch in time saves the penny earned. Or something like that.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Criticism should be received as a kindness (Ps. 141:5).”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“God blesses giving, so every use of language, down to the lowliest tweet, ought to be thought of as a gift to others.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“The apostle James tells us that a man who can control his tongue can control the rest of his body as well. This goes double for the man who is putting what the tongue does into a more permanent setting.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life

“Plod diligently. Plodding generally goes in the same direction, while pottering doesn't.”
― Douglas Wilson, Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life