Saturday, January 5, 2008

I Plead The Fifth On This One


A writer is someone who writes. Planning to write is not writing. Outlining is not writing. Researching is not writing. Talking to people about what you are doing is not writing. Writing is writing.



-E.L. Doctorow
From Karl Iglesias's article on "The Screenwriter's 7 Deadly Sins" in Creative Screenwriting Volume 14, Number 6

4 comments:

Patchwork said...

Oh God! I'm not a writer! Demmet!

Note to brain-dead-just-out-of-holiday-self: Plan to stop planning to write and just write Bridget!

Writeprocrastinator said...

Bridget,

Of course, if that quote is taken as an absolute, then even some professionals wordsmiths would not be actual writers.

WellesFan said...

This quote sums up one of the early posts on my blog (from about a year ago). I'd like to call myself a writer, but I'm not writing enough. I've also stopped talking about it on my blog until I actually have something completed. :)

Cormac Brown said...

Wells Fan,

Kvetching about not writing is even worse on screenwriting blogs and it comprises over seventy percent of their page content. At least regular writers have the option of the short story, which gives the impression that at least something got done.