Newsletter #8: Yates, Beginning to Write, Writing and Opportunities
Richard Yates
Three Sentences to Imitate and Study
I.
All Miss Price had been told about the new boy was that he’d spent most of his life in some kind of orphanage, and that the gray-haired “aunt and uncle” with whom he now lived were really foster parents, paid by the Welfare Department of the city of New York.
- Richard Yates, “Doctor Jack-o’-Lantern”
II.
Myra straightened herself in the backseat and smoothed her skirt, pushing Jack’s hand away.
- Richard Yates, “No Pain Whatsoever”
III.
Sergeant Reece was a slim, quiet Tennessean who always managed to look neat in fatigues, and he wasn’t exactly what we’d expected an infantry platoon sergeant to be.
- Richard Yates, “Jody Rolled the Bones”
Two Quotes on Beginning to Write
I.
“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.”
- Octavia E. Butler
II.
“I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that is not there.”
- Audre Lorde
This Week’s Writing Prompt/Tip
I have two purposes for creating this newsletter. The first is to build an audience of readers who like my work and want to work with me. The other is to inspire as many people as I can to sit down and write.
A few weeks ago I came across a great inspirational article by Nathan Barry (founder of ConvertKit) on how writing and publishing consistently can open up a world of opportunities.
I know fiction writers feel like they have it rough right now, but I truly believe that if novelists, screenwriters, poets start a website or create a strategy for posting on social media that great opportunities will come along.
Below is a link to Barry’s article. I encourage you to give it a read and think about how writing about what you know or writing fiction and publishing your work daily or weekly might create more opportunities than you imagine.
Nathan Berry’s Good things come to those who write.
Read the article and let me know what you think. Post your response in the Comments section below.
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