If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Tag: Anne Lamott
The Three Questions
Guest Blogger Shawn Langwell shares smart writing tips, focusing on three important questions. Octavia E. Butler said, “You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.” Writing and leadership have a lot in common. Both require creativity, passion, and persistence. Both are conversations. And every good author as well as effective leaders know their audience. Each requires a level of confidence and humility to listen. To listen to the suggestions of an editor. To listen to the inner voice that says you need to sit your butt down on a regular basis and write. Or, upon awakening to listen and follow the conviction of a dream so vivid and powerful that the story just unfolds and becomes a book and a short…
Feeling broken? Trying unplugging.
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. —Anne Lamott, Salon, April 10, 2015