“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.” —Allegra Goodman
Hemingway and Mark Twain wrote for their time. Read their words and learn their ways, but don’t try to be like the Greats of Old. Their day has come and gone, and it’s time for youto share your words with the world.
Pour your heart and soul onto the page, learn from your own mistakes, and above all, keep writing!
Regardless how bad your writing seems/is, keep doing it. Star athletes don’t get massive sponsored deals on their first try, and neither will you (most likely). Get those writing muscles finely tuned before you worry about the big leagues. Every sentence is a step in the right direction. Every paragraph is a hard-won point. Every finished work is a hole-in-one.
Get out there and write, writers! Set small, reasonable goals, then meet them! When those become easy, step it up! If 300 words a day is all you can pull off today, how many do you think you’ll be up to if you do that every day?
Baby steps are still steps. This applies to everything challenging; just start, and don’t stop.
In 1487 during the Inquisition, two Dominican friars, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger published the witch-hunters’ book, Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches). The misogynistic manual promoted the idea that women are inherently evil and form pacts with the devil. As a justification for Kramer’s unfair trials and horrific acts of torture, the book incited church authorities and civic judges to murder 60,000 victims for witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries.
