ADVICE I GIVE MY STUDENTS EACH SEPTEMBER: ADVICE I GIVE MYSELF

Begin anywhere.  John Cage

The major difficulty a writer must face has nothing to do with language; it is finding or making the circumstances that make writing possible.  The first project for a writer is that of constructing a writing life.   David Huddle 

Be worthy of your vocation, which is, after all is said and done, truly a career of danger and daring. George Garrett 

One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience.  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

You’re the first audience to your work and the most important audience.  Gloria Naylor


To the great artist, anything whatever is possible.  John Gardner

What do I need in order to release my imagination?  Toni Morrison


Fiction is forever fiction; but readers want to believe, if only for a few hours, that their lives and worlds have expanded.  They want to respond as if fiction were real.  Jewell Parker Rhodes


The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.  Junot Diaz