"I think there are three steps to writing a script. First, you have to have a theme, something you want to say. It doesn’t have to be a particularly great thing, but you have to have something that’s bothering you. In the case of Taxi Driver, the theme was loneliness. Then you find a metaphor for that theme, one that expresses it. In Taxi Driver, that was the cabbie, the perfect expression of urban loneliness. Then you have to find a plot, which is the easiest part of the process. All plots have been done; they’re fairly easy, you just work through all the permutations until the plot accurately reflects the theme and the metaphor. You push the theme through the metaphor and you should come out with the plot."

Paul Schrader

Via Austin Kleon, who adds:

I love that substitution for theme: something that’s bothering you

"

One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: ”Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”

"

Annie Dillard (via thebronzemedal)

"Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write."

Annie Proulx (via theparisreview)

"The primary difference between prose and cinema (beyond the obvious) is I think in time, and how each handles it; cinema (like theatre before it) no matter how achingly it might strive for universal generalities, must necessarily show you specific people doing specific things in specific places at very specific times. Prose, on its wily other hand, can say: “Monday morning staff meetings were always a chore for Willy” or “For the next week whenever she went to the coffee shop she saw the woman on the corner” or “And then everybody died.” —The narrow bandwidth of prose can’t begin to approach the wealth of incidental detail that makes up cinematic specificity without enormous slogging effort; most of the tricks and tips one needs to learn to tell stories and have them told with mere words, in fact, those reading protocols we’ve all had put in place, have everything to do with tricking us into thinking that specificity’s been achieved without us noticing (just as a great many of cinema’s tricks are all about forcing us to empathize with the saps up on the screen, bridging the vast gulf between their specifities and ours)."

Long story; short pier: Gramarye

View high resolution

idrawnintendo:

I think I finally realized the moral of Super Mario Bros.

(via fuckyeahthoreau)

"[Newspapers] are the single most efficient way to immerse yourself in the past. If you want to know about 1908, don’t go to some secondary source - read the newspapers. Any old edition will have some revelation which doesn’t hold with our received notions of the time."

Nicholson Baker (via newspaperblackout)

(via newspaperblackout)

"My life is as simple as I can make it. Work all day, cook, eat, wash up, telephone, hack writing, drink, television in the evenings. I almost never go out. I suppose everyone tries to ignore the passing of time: some people by doing a lot, being in California one year and Japan the next; or there’s my way—making every day and every year exactly the same."

Philip Larkin (via austinkleon)

(via austinkleon)

"A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning."

Flannery O’Connor (via writingadvice) (via italicsmine)

(via italicsmine)

"It’s not so much writer’s block as writer’s gap …. Meaning, you don’t have anything to say. To which you have only two responses: start writing about anything, and see if something emerges. Or get away from your desk and do something else that will fill you up."

Empty / from a working library

Programming note

After 3+ years of going as “newsroom” in the Tumblr community I’ve finally given in and switched to my real name®.

Also, I’m soliciting advice on writing, inspiration, and creative block. If you have any (or a good link) please send it over. Thank you!

"Here’s how it works. He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.” “Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis."

Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret

This is so true.

(via luclatulippe)

(via drawnblog)

"Writing…is compromised by doubt. … Writing can be so weighed down by doubt — if not of one’s talent then of paying the rent — that it cannot lift off into a trance. Editing is a different story. By the time we are ready to edit our first draft, we are, in most cases, past the first doubt, and too invested to give up. A fighting spirit defines and facilitates a good edit. We have put in our time, found (more or less) our purpose, and we will not accept defeat. We may sulk after seeing a shoddy draft, but not for long. Life’s demands gratefully interfere with self-pity. Soon enough, we will be editing with a vengeance."

Susan Bell, The Artful Edit

"Third-person singular, past tense, is most natural and inevitable, I guess. But you’d best beware the monotone in it and the temptations toward false wisdom, cleverness. First person is where you can be more interesting as a fool, and I find this often leads to the more delightful expedition. You don’t have to be much but a stumbling fool. The wisdom there is more precious than in the sage overview, which in many writers makes me nearly puke. I’m also wary of the glibness that third person invites."

Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 184, Barry Hannah

"The best way out is always through."

Robert Frost, “A Servant To Servants” (via jasonbaldwin)