Poets should learn with their eyes, the forms of leaves.
They should know how to make people laugh when all are together.
They should go to see what people are really like.
They should know about oceans and mountains in themselves,
and the sun and the moon and the stars.
Their minds should enter into the seasons.
They should go among many people in many places,
and learn their languages.
Kshemandra, 11th century
"Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed - there's so little competition."
Elbert Hubbard
"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." I ♥! Dr. Seuss
"Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded." Fyodor Dostoevsky
"Every single Pixar film, at one time or another, has been the worst movie ever put on film. But we know. We trust our process. We don't get scared and say, 'Oh, no, this film isn't working.'"
John Lasseter
"I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well."
Johann Sebastian Bach
As Woodie Guthrie said, "I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built. I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work."
Ira Glass on Inspiration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?...Ann Rice on Breaking Into Writing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?...Rod Serling "Writing for Television"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?...If you received a disappointing review it is likely due to gratuitous violence, glorification of drug abuse, religious propaganda, misogyny, homophobia, ethnocentrism, racism, non-existent warp-drives aliens zombies psychics time-portals vampires, an adolescent obsession with genitalia-under-the-influence, or other one-dimensional easy-to-write fantasies from a repressed cocooned extended childhood. There is no excuse for propagating such irresponsible unimaginative nonsense, especially for entertainment. Off-color comedy can be great - and we live in a violent, extraordinarily intolerant, brutal world, which needs realistic depiction to be repaired - but, if your work celebrates and profits from this without a clear redeeming moral point of view, it is part of the problem. Add a non-comedic straight man/woman sidekick or heartfelt moment of introspection - it will deepen your characters, expand their world, and provide you an opportunity to improve our Culture. You are smart enough to make a difference. Please do not waste time by not trying.
1. "Brevity is the soul of wit."
2. "Do not write like you went to college."
3. Write what you would trade your life to watch.
4. Censoring yourself kills Muses. Speak. Your. Mind.
Watch this video of Michael Arndt, a former script reader for Matthew Broderick (
https://www.youtube.com/watch... ) Takeaway: professional script readers _never_ read the same script twice; amateur writers circulate rough scripts before they, the writers, even consider their own work finished...as if by some miracle readers will discern genius, then help find a professional to finish the script. This is a mistake. Ask your family and friends for feedback - with detailed questionnaires - before uploading your work to Amazon. Respect readers. What you upload for review here should be your very best effort. Take a few more months to research it, read similar scripts beforehand... set it aside for a couple of weeks and only then rewrite the fourth or fifth draft - before uploading it. Chances are no one here will read more than the first page of a rough draft, if that. They almost certainly will not read an ill-prepared script twice.
"Be a yardsick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”
"Every artist was first an amateur."
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails at least fails while daring greatly".
"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
"Men are failures not because they are stupid, but because they are not sufficiently impassioned."
"The most powerful entity on earth is a human soul on fire."
"This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important." — Gary Provost
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Evernote has been available for a while but in case anyone here has not checked it out for writing purposes, it can be useful...imagine a Notebook with individual Notes for specific scenes, settings, characters, and episodes. Evernote makes organizing material over broad epic features or an episodic series much, much easier...whenever inspiration comes to you, whether on your phone or workplace computer, save your idea, snippet of dialogue, turn of phrase, inspirational image, url, or youtube song immediately to a Note for specific scenes or episodes to speed up your workflow...
https://evernote.com
