Home > Work > Take Joy: A Writer's Guide to Loving the Craft
1 " We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves. "
― Jane Yolen , Take Joy: A Writer's Guide to Loving the Craft
2 " A good story is [a] kind of irritant. You read it, then you cannot stop thinking about it. Eventually, your mind and heart encyst about it, and what occurs is a pearl of the soul. "
3 " I contend that good children's stories are always about the Getting of Wisdom. That's another way of saying, "Let your characters grow. Up." And good stories for adults are about the Holding of Wisdom. Another way of saying, "Recognize you are grown up. "
4 " You may adore Love You Forever, but I hear it as a story about an overbearing and smothering mother who infantilizes her son and can only tell him she loves him when he is fast asleep. I also contend that she drugs his cocoa. And that when the man's baby daughter wakes up sixteen years later and finds him fondling her in her room, she will be calling 911 and going into therapy. "
5 " Fiction is like wrestling with angels-you do not expect to win, but you do expect to come away from the experience changed. "