I posted some quotes below from bestselling authors on the craft of writing and the writer’s life. Some are funny, most are thought provoking, but the one at the top of the list from Willa Cather struck me as a topic for conversation here at TKZ.
From Cather’s quote, it would appear she believed that most of an author’s innate ability to write comes from how their lives were shaped in the first 15 years. We can read craft books, attend lectures, and follow as much advice as we have time to absorb on how to write books, construct stories, create characters, and world build, but there is also a part of who we are that makes up the total author.
For me, I grew up in a large family and our parents taught us how to laugh and we used our imaginations to tell stories and have adventures outside, not with video games. We even had skits we did for summer projects on our own. We did audio recordings of scripts I wrote as TV show parodies, complete with fake commercials. We chose video recordings (like a filmmaker) for class projects. We were all about theatrics and drama, for fun.
I wrote a lot of things and had always been drawn to the written word. My grandfather had been a big influence on me. He came to this country from Mexico after fleeing the revolution in his country. He wrote for the Hispanic newspaper, La Prensa, in San Antonio and he eventually managed the Alameda Theatre that brought in vaudeville acts and Mexican movie stars to the stage. As a young child I rode a pony across the stage of that theatre as part of an act.
Mostly I remember listening to my grandfather’s many stories. Some were real and others, not so much. What he didn’t know, he made up with a flourish. All of these influences became ways for me to tell a story and stretch my imagination.
I can see what influenced me as a writer in those early years, but I’d love to hear from you about your lives and formative experiences.
1.) What in your earlier years influenced you to become a writer?
2.) Do you agree with Willa Cather that most of a writer’s basic skills are experienced before 15 years of age?
3.) What do you think influences authors most in those first 15 years?
Quote For Discussion:
“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”
Willa Cather
Quotes On Craft & The Writer’s Life:
“All the information you need can be given in dialogue.”
Elmore Leonard
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
E. L. Doctorow
“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.”
William Faulkner
“People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it.”
Harlan Ellison
HUMOROUS (I hope):
“A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.”
Sidney Sheldon
“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”
Mark Twain
“Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.”
Truman Capote
“I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.”
Stephen King
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
Robert A. Heinlein
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Douglas Adams