"Think before you speak. Read before you think." ~ Fran Lebowitz

"I tell my students; I tell everybody this. When I begin a creative writing class I say, 'I know you've heard all your life, "Write what you know." Well I am here to tell you, "You don't know nothing. So do not write what you know. Think up something else." ~ Toni Morrison

What a lovely concept: body doubling, finding regular online partners for creative work. @MalloryClarke @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/b... #authorlife #creativewriting #writinglife #skywriters

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the entire universe.” ~ Carl Sagan

"The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced." ~ W. Somerset Maugham

“Stories move in circles. They don’t go in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories, and finding your way through them is as easy and hard as finding your way home.” ~ Naomi Newman

What is joy? Do we recognise it enough? And what, as creative people, should we do with it? @bethkephart.bsky.social at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/11/04/j... #creativity #slowliving #creativelife #authorlife

“Use a reader's leisure time in such a way that the reader will not feel his time has been wasted.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

If you have any kind of published book, the chances are you've heard from these scammers. Don't be reeled in @allisonkwilliams.bsky.social at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/11/03/l... #authorlife #bookmarketing #writinglife #writingcommunity #skywriters

"How do we write joy without all the implied exclamation marks, the gooey language, the purpling of our prose? How do we make, of joy, a story that is alerting, alive, and credible?" ~ Beth Kephart

“My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see." ~ Joseph Conrad

Thank you @dintywmoore.bsky.social #writers #writerslife

In #writingcraft what is 'show not tell'? This, from @dintywmoore.bsky.social, should clarify brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/31/h... #storytelling #writingcommunity #amwriting

"Halloween ... is the crack between the last golden rays of summer and the dark of winter; the delicately balanced tweak of the year before it is given over entirely to the dark; a time for the ... departed to squint, to peek and perhaps to travel through the gap." ~ Jenny Colgan

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms." ~ Mary Oliver

"Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going." ~ Tennessee Williams

"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. " ~ James Joyce

How do you build a sustainable writing group that helps you achieve your goals? @SarahCanney, @amreklimchak.bsky.social @annajrollins.bsky.social at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/24/t... #writinglife #creativelife #authorlife #skywriters

"Writing is a funny business. You sit in your room and listen to voices and write everything down. What kind of a profession is that?" ~ William Kittredge

Featured in this list: @agnimagazine.bsky.social @baltimorereview.bsky.social @dintywmoore.bsky.social @cincinnatireview.bsky.social @grantamag.bsky.social @kenyonreview.bsky.social @malahatreview.bsky.social @islandmag.bsky.social @smokelong.bsky.social

These award-winning lit mags would be a crown jewel in any writer's bio *wink* Submit to them here: www.chillsubs.com/lists/excell... #writing #writingcommunity

"Make room for new truths that are more potent than the ones we think we know." ~ Jeannine Ouellette / @jeannineouellette.bsky.social

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity." ~ Dorothy Parker

Let's compare writing to... competitive ice skating! (And birth and death) @jocelynjanecox.bsky.social to @dianegotauthor.bsky.social at @dintywmoore.bsky.social inc @vineleavespress.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/m... #writinglife #memoir #lifewriting #skywriters

A cautionary tale about where we make our online communities - how @allisonkwilliams.bsky.social finally restored her Facebook account and what she's now doing differently brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/21/n... @dintywmoore.bsky.social #writinglife #writingcommunity #authorlife #skywriters

"Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please ... tell us something that will save us from ourselves." ~ Alan Watts

'A sort of magic takes place during a period of dormancy.' How that can happen for your writing @KateMeadows at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/20/t... #writingcommunity #writingtips #creativewriting #lifewriting #skywriters

“We may believe that only certain conditions will make us happy. But ... the conditions for happiness are already there, available inside and around us. We have eyes that can see, legs that can walk, lungs that can breathe.” ~ Thich Nhất Hanh

"The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it’s to imagine what is possible." ~ bell hooks

"I think the deeper you go into questions, the deeper or more interesting the questions get. And I think that’s the job of art.” ~ Andre Dubus III

Writing is exploration. Sometimes a particular path leads you to a brick wall you can't get beyond. Why that's okay. @MaryHannahTerzino at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/14/c... #writingcommunity #slowliving #cnf #essays #writinglife #authorlife #skywriters

Creative Nonfiction -- the term that continues to confuse. brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/15/w...

“Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.” ~ Julia Cameron,

“I don't know what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. A great book allows me to leap over that wall..." ~ David Foster Wallace

The distractible writer's guide to getting things finished (I know this feeling too) @laurazinnfromm.bsky.social at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/13/h... #writinglife #authorcommunity #lifewriting #skywriters

"Sentences are the bricks as well as the mortar, the motor as well as the fuel. They are the cells, the individual stitches. Their nature is at once solitary and social. Sentences establish tone, and set the pace. One in front of the other marks the way." ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

On knots and trying to make sense of life - @katnuernberger.bsky.social on @coriwinrock.bsky.social at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/10/l... #writingcommunity #cnf #memoir #authorlife #writinglife #lifewriting #skywriters

W/thanks to @maorthofer.bsky.social, @insidehighered.com, @dintywmoore.bsky.social, @bethanyjarmul.bsky.social, et al.

"The problem we’re up against, as writers and people alive in this world is that everything does not happen for a reason, it just happens." ~ Kathryn Nuernberger / @katnuernberger.bsky.social

Who's the reader for your memoir? Why answering this question will help you find a publishing deal @allisonkwilliams.bsky.social at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/08/a... #WritingCommunity #writinglife #authorlife #publishing #skywriters

"I came to poetry through a love of reading poetry ... The feeling of how much could happen in such a small space was heady." ~ Baron Wormser

Also on the subject of noticing: how tiny true stories will sharpen your writing mind @bethanyjarmul.bsky.social at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/07/t... #writingcommunity #memoir #writinglife #creativewriting #authorlife #skywriters

A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. ~ Groucho Marx

Today let's compare writing to... gymnastics! (Desire, determination, pain, resilience...) @LainyCarslaw at @dintywmoore.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/10/01/w... #writingcommunity #authorcommunity #writinglife #authorlife #skywriters

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?” ~ Vita Sackville-West

"Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art." ~ James Baldwin

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” ~ Jane Goodall

"What I write is smarter than I am, because I can re-write it." ~ Susan Sontag (photo by Annie Leibovitz)

"I write with soft pencils because you get to spend more time sharpening the pencil, which is easier and more fun than writing." ~ Stephen Sondheim

"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." ~ Edna Ferber