Duotrope, a searchable database listing over 2,000 plus publications, is an invaluable resource for writers like me who need help finding a home for their work. That last book or article you read and were telling everyone about may not have ever been published if the writer didn’t know what publisher to submit to. Duotrope …
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The following is more from Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:
It might be a little silly for someone getting to be my age to put this into words, but I just want to make sure I get the facts down clearly: I’m the kind of person who likes to be …
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The following is an excerpt from What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami:
Once, I was lying around a hotel room in Paris reading the International Herald Tribune when I came across a special article on the marathon. There were interviews with several famous marathon runners, and they were asked what …
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The following are excerpts from The Brothers Karamazov, Book 1, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the version translated by Constance Garnett:
At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupiditiy—the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and intelligent enough—but just …
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The following excerpts are from Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology.
In a myth of the Melanesian island of Malekula in the New Hebrides, which describes the dangers of the way to the Land of the Dead, it is told that when the soul has been carried on a wind across the …
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The following are some of Anton Chekhov’s words on the art of writing, as first quoted in Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer:
In my opinion a true description of nature should be very brief and have the character of relevance. Commonplaces such as “the setting sun bathed the waves of the darkening sea, poured its …
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The following is from Darkness Absolute: The Standards of Excellence in Horror Fiction by Douglas E. Winter, a critic and biographer of Stephen King and Clive Barker:
If you would excel in this field, remember that a fundamental mistake is to strive to emulate the commercial horror novel or story. The bulk of this fiction is …
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The following is from The Farther Reaches of Human Nature (Viking Press, 1971) by the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow, as quoted in Sexist Stereotypes and Archetypes: What to Do With Them/ What the Writing Woman Can Hope For by Jeannette M. Hopper:
“I have learned recently (through my studies of peak experiences) to look at women …
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The following excerpts on the artist’s battlefied are from The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, who wrote Gates of Fire (NYTimes Bestseller) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (NYTimes Bestseller).
(The bold on text is my own. )
A Professional
Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write …
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The following is from the advertisement Elsie Poncher put on eBay selling her husband’s burial plot above Marilyn Monroe’s.
“Here is a once in a lifetime and into eternity opportunity to spend your eternal days directly above Marilyn Monroe,” says the advertisement.
“In fact the person occupying the address right now is looking face down on her.”
If you …
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