Lauren Mancke

In Defense Of Always Writing Your Heart Out

Because there will be times where there's no other choice.
Heidi Priebe
February 6, 2017
“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”
— Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
Tagged: Writing, Pain, Trauma, Healing, Honesty, expression, Self-Expression, vulnerability
“If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.”
— Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
Tagged: Fear, vulnerability, expression, Self-Expression, Honesty, Opening Up
“The difference between life and art is art is more bearable.”
— Charles Bukowski, Charles Bukowski, American Author
Tagged: Art, Life, Healing, expression
“The one thing you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked… That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”
— Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art
Tagged: Writing, drawing, Dancing, Passion
“That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Stranger Than Fiction
Tagged: Writing, Words, Life, Living, Reflection
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.”
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows
Tagged: Words, Writing, Injury, Healing, Pain
“A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. ”
— Robert Frost, Letter to Louis Untermeyer
Tagged: Poetry, poem, Writing, Words
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
— Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing
Tagged: Reality, Writing, Life
“If you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.”
— Stephen King, On Writing
Tagged: Writing, Career, How to be a writer
“In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. Wasn't until that night when I was faced with all those lousy pages that I realized, really realized, what it was exactly that I am.”
— Junot Dìaz, Battling my way to a Pulitzer Prize novel
Tagged: Writing, Writers, Novels, Hope
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
— Toni Morrison, The Handy English Grammar Answer Book
Tagged: Books, Reading, Writing
“Poems are where the pain goes.”
— Janne Robinson, Poems Are Where The Pain Goes
Tagged: Pain, Poetry, Writing
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Tagged: Writing, On Writing, How to be a writer, Stories
“Why are some things easier to write than say?”
— Ally Condie, Matched
Tagged: Writing, expression, Words, Feelings
“Art is the place to safely explore all those other sides of you, because the side you want to bring home is the side that wants to be a good father and be a good husband and be a good son. In art we can be fucking nuts.”
— Lin-Manuel Miranda, 'Hamilton' Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda Is in GQ (and Ready for His Next Big Thing)
Tagged: Art, characters, Exploring, Being human
“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself.”
— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin: A Novel
Tagged: Truth, Writing, Creativity
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
— Ernest Hemingway, Unknown
Tagged: Writing, Writers, How to be a writer
“If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act—truth is always subversive.”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Tagged: Stories, inspiration, Writing, Writers
“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.”
— Allen Ginsberg, Columbians Ahead Of Their Time
Tagged: Poetry, expression, private, public
“Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation.”
— Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication
Tagged: Lyrics, Creativity, Art, Writing, Drugs, Self Destruction, Creative Destruction
“I sat down and it just came out. Flew out. It's like this story has been sitting in my brain for years, taking up space.”
— Lorelai Gilmore, Once Upon a Time, Season 4: Fall
Tagged: Writing, Finding Your Voice, inspiration
“Express the darkness with pen and paper. Write until you are empty of the negative thoughts. Write until you feel free from the chains of misery. Writing has been the best catharsis for me and it might work for you too.”
— Mariel Alvarez, 8 Beautiful Things My Depression Has Taught Me
Tagged: Mental Health, Writing, expression, Creativity
“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.”
— Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays(FSG Classics)
Tagged: Writing, Being A Writer
“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. 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, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”
— Alan Watts, Twitter
Tagged: Writing, Being A Writer, Writers, Advice
“I have a mess in my head sometimes, and there’s something very satisfying about putting it into words.”
— Carrie Fisher, The A.V. Club
Tagged: Writers, Writing, How to be a writer
“When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.”
— Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
Tagged: Why Words Matter, expression, Communication, Quote of the Moment