Dear Writer Quotes

“attention a form of currency we pay to things we value.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“Art is a site of wonder and discovery—or rediscovery. Art is a place where we might learn what we think, not a place where we teach the reader what we've already processed.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“Any piece of writing is a time capsule. It reflects the choices—and the abilities, and the limitations—of the writer we are at the time.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“Commit to doing at least one thing in service of your writing every day.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“Creativity isn't just about making art. Making your life is the ultimate creative act. I believe creativity is contagious, and when we put some of that into the world, it gets passed from person to person… I hope you're here because you know that embracing creativity will help you live a richer, more fulfilling, more connected life.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“one of the most liberating aspects of writing poems is also one of the saddest aspects of writing poems: one cannot make a living at writing poems.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“There’s no creating, and no living a fulfilling creative life, without connection.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“Constraints are prompts, challenges, provocations.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“Remember: If you don’t do your work, it won’t exist. Make sure that it does.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“you are not responsible for the world—you are only responsible for your work—so DO IT.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“When you're restless, you're alive and awake, not sleepwalking in your life or in your creative practice. You value independent thinking of compliance, experimentation, and risk over the sure thing. Restless riders are flexible and nimble; they resist doing the same thing again, and again, even if that thing was successful and well received. They refused to rest on their laurels.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“Creativity is artistic mischief… We're working, but we're delighting in the work. When children play, it's not a means to an end. Playing is the point and its own reward.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life

“When I'm writing, or settling in to write, I have a far-off look. I know this because my friend Wendy captured it in a photograph. In the picture, I'm sitting on a train somewhere in Montana, holding a pen, a notebook in my lap. I'm looking out the window, but there doesn't need to be a window. I'm not looking, I'm listening. I can see it in my face, how closely I'm listening for the voice of the mind. Of my mind.”
― Maggie Smith, Dear Writer: Pep Talks and Practical Advice for the Creative Life