The Worst Thing You Can Try To

The Great Thing About Writing Is That...you Can Do All These Antisocial Things And You Get Paid For Them And Nobody Ever Arrests You Because They're All Make-believe. Then That Way If You Were Actually Ever Driven To Do Any Of Those Things, The Pressure's Off Because You'd Have Already Written Them Down. It's Therapy.

Some Of This Book—perhaps Too Much—has Been About How I Learned To Do It. Much Of It Has Been About How You Can Do It Better. The Rest Of It—and Perhaps The Best Of It—is A Permission Slip: You Can, You Should, And If You're Brave Enough To Start, You Will. Writing Is Magic, As Much The Water Of Life As Any Other Creative Art. The Water Is Free. So Drink. Drink And Be Filled Up.

You Can Approach The Act Of Writing With Nervousness, Excitement, Hopefulness, Or Despair ... Come To It Any Way But Lightly.

Come To A Book As You Would Come To An Unexplored Land. Come Without A Map. Explore It, And Draw Your Own Map.... A Book Is Like A Pump. It Gives Nothing Unless First You Give To It.

I've Given Up Thinking - It Keeps Getting Me Into Trouble.