James Baldwin - Part 2

This week's writing tips come from American writer and activist James Baldwin.
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Weekly Writing Tips - James Baldwin

This weeks' writing tips come from American Author James Baldwin, who was acclaimed across various mediums, including essays, novels, plays, and poems exploring themes of masculinity, sexuality, race, and class.

1. Write to find out.

"When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway."

2. Use every experience.

"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."

3. But know when to stop.

"When you’ve finished a novel it means, “The train stops here, you have to get off here.” You never get the book you wanted, you settle for the book you get. I’ve always felt that when a book ended there was something I didn’t see, and usually when I remark the discovery it’s too late to do anything about it."

Writing Prompt:
Writing Prompt:

Begin your story with
"When nobody was around..."

Writing Prompt:

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Author: Colin Murdy

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