Almost all writers are in love with quotes. Some of us are drawn to the most famous quotes that always crop up in literary circles. Others of us like to find our own top quotes every time that we read. We share them with other writers in our blogs, letters, emails and social media accounts. But, most importantly, many of us post them where we can see them on a regular basis.
Why Post Quotes
There are many great reasons to post quotes. For example:
- Quotes inspire our lives.
- Quotes inspire our writing.
- Quotes help remind us of our goals.
- Quotes celebrate the hard work of other authors.
- Quotes celebrate what we love - WORDS.
- In the front pages of your journal. This is a favorite place for me.
- Inside of your favorite books. Write them on bookmark size pieces of paper and you have inspiring, creative bookmarks. Keep blank ones and you can add quotes from books as you read them.
- On desks and laptop stands. This is where you probably do most of your writing.
- On your laptop or laptop sleeve. Adhere them to the outside of your laptop or the sleeve you carry it in.
- On your computer as wallpaper or screensaver.
- As artwork on your walls. I enjoy making collage art and adding my top favorite quotes to it. Then I hang the art around the house.
- Inside of a dresser drawer. Choose a drawer you use daily such as your sock drawer. Read the quotes each day to inspire you.
- In a purse or wallet. Preferably inside of something that you take with you most places that you go.
- Inside of your mobile phone. Add a favorite quote as your phone’s screen saver. Store other quotes inside of the phone as SMS message drafts.
- Taped to the coffee maker or tea pot. Many of us writers fall prey to the need to drink coffee or tea while we do our writing. Since we’re using those machines anyway, let’s make them more useful by adding quotes on to them.
Not too long ago I did a post showing photographs from my mural walk which featured poetry written all over the city. Today I’ve got a video to share that shows Portuguese poetry written along a bike path. What a beautiful idea! I love the thought that you can find writing everywhere that you go … it’s inspiring for writers of all types! TreeHugger has the video along with a written translation.
I’ve started blogging for a really great local Tshirt company called Edgi. Needing to research for that blog gives me a great excuse to read a lot of fashion and t-shirt news. Doing so led me to a post from Cool Hunting which I thought might interest other writers. It’s about a T-shirt company called Out of Print that uses old and out-of-print books as the inspiration for its designs.
The designs themselves are cool and the tees make great conversation starters. After all, people are going to have something to say when they see you sporting a vintage edition of Lolita or some other classic novel that they’ve read (or think they should).
More importantly, however, the T-shirt company is a partner to a company called Books in Africa which aims to bring books to areas of the world where it’s not easy to find them. Imagine not being able to go to your local library to pick up a read. People in other parts of the world don’t have that luxury and this organization tries to help. For every t-shirt that is bought, a donation goes to Books in Africa. Definitely a cool idea.
I recently went on a tour of the Mission District here in San Francisco. (Learn more about that from Diary of a Smart Chick). One of the things that I noticed was that there was a lot of text incorporated into the murals. Combined with the images of the murals and the stories behind them it all looked like poetry (and of course some of it was intended to be that way. Here’s a glance at the writing in murals:
There is an episode of Sex and the City which I only vaguely remember where the girls talk about what they have in the “goodie drawers” beside their beds. They are talking about sex toys, of course, and I recall Samantha joking about how she has a whole goodie closet.
I bought a new bed frame for myself over the summer. It has a bookcase headboard and it has drawers underneath the mattresses. I, too, have a goodie drawer. It is the drawer closest to where I lay my head at night and the drawer which is easiest for me to reach in the morning. It isn’t sex toys that you’ll find in there, though … it’s journals.
I have been keeping a personal journal off and on since I was about ten. Writing in this journal is an important part of my regular routine. I used to hide the journal to make sure that no one would find it. These days I tuck it away so that it’s not tempting to the curious eyes of people who happen to be in my house but I don’t worry much because I don’t think that anyone I let in my house would actually violate my privacy by reading my journal. It’s one of those journals that wouldn’t be that interesting to others anyway; it’s filled with the banalities of life and my thoughts about nothing much. It’s something I do just for me.
This isn’t the only journal that I keep these days. I also try to keep a gratitude journal in which I regularly note the things that I am feeling most thankful for. I don’t do this daily (although I once did and think it’s good to do so) but I do it steadily enough. And I have a journal for affirmations and a journal for writing exercises. I certainly have plenty of private things that I could keep in my goodie drawer but it’s these things that end up being most important to me.
And of course then I have the bookcase headboard which is filled with the latest two dozen books that I’ve gotten out of the library and may read voraciously or may not read at all. I can see them there and be motivated to pick them up and do some reading though and that’s why those are left out in the open instead of tucked away into drawers.
What do you have in your goodie drawer? Where do you keep your private writing?
- Promote your blog. A really cool tag cloud that shows what you write about on your blog is going to entice people to read about it. Generate one and post it on your blog, link to it via Twitter, make it a Flickr photo or send it out as a comment or social networking message. The more readers you have the more inspired you’re going to be to write better on your blog.
- Generate story ideas. You can use a tag cloud to get ideas about what you want to write about next. Just enter any URL or chunk of text into the tag cloud generator and see what comes up. Use the words there to get ideas for your next story line.
- Various creative writing exercises. Writing exercises are really good for you to do to keep your writing fresh. There are any number of writing exercises that you can do involving your tag clouds. For example, choose a paragraph from your favorite book and enter it into the tag cloud. Take the top five words that come up largest on the screen. Write five paragraphs of a story with each paragraph beginning with one of those words. Come up with your own creative writing exercises! (I’d love to hear more suggestions in the comments here!)
- Make poetry. You can use tag cloud generators to create visually interesting poems. Do this daily and you’ll find that your writing benefits from doing so because you get a new look at old words.
- Create inspirational word collages. Generate several tag clouds. Print them out. Cut out the words that appeal to you most. Make your own new word collages. Post these word collages all around the area in which you do your writing. Having them there should inspire you to keep on working at your creativity.
- Generate series of articles easily. People who do their writing for the web (or even for magazines) know that it’s very profitable to take one article and re-write it in a fresh way to create a series of related articles. This is done much more easily when using tag clouds. You enter the text of your article into a tag cloud generator. This shows you which keywords are used most in the article. Take the top five or ten keywords and rewrite the article with your focus on each of those words. For example, let’s say that you wrote an article on Celtic history. Your tag cloud shows that you wrote a lot about myths and about jewelry. Write one article about the history of Celtic myths and one article about the history of Celtic jewelry.
- Use tag clouds as an editing tool. When you are done writing a piece of work, enter the text into a tag cloud generator. See which words come up most frequently. Are these words in line with the thesis of your paper? If not then you’ll want to take the information that you have in the tag cloud and edit the work accordingly to make sure that you’re hitting all of your key points in your article.
I just wanted to send out a quick reminder to all of my writer friends that writing is a gift to be shared with others. It is actually one of the best gifts that you can give to someone else this holiday season. You can write love letters, heartfelt Christmas cards, songs, poems, and stories for the people in your life. You can combine your writing with photographs to make memory books that will touch their hearts.
So often we think of writing as our work. However writing is also our life. It’s what we have to share with others. Those others shouldn’t just be the readers that we have come to love. We should also share our writing with those we love who may or may not be our regular readers. Even if your hubby doesn’t read your blog or your mom doesn’t quite “get” your books, these people will appreciate the writing that is written just as a gift for them.
Check out my recent hub 15 Ideas for Using your Writing as a Gift to get some ideas for word-based Christmas gifts that you can give this year.
I am someone who believes in the power of keeping a journal. I got my first diary when I was about ten years old and have kept one fairly steadily since that time. Although I’ve gone through bouts of not writing for awhile, I always return to keeping a journal because I believe that it benefits me immensely as both a writer and an individual.
Some of the top benefits that I’ve experienced as a result of keeping a journal:
- The many benefits of a daily routine. I believe that having daily rituals helps us to get up and get going in the morning. My morning routine starts my day off right and helps me feel like I’m on track with things. Journaling is one part of that routine for me.
- The power of self-reflection. I think that all people, particularly writers, need time to reflect on life and on themselves every single day. It’s hard to do that when we have so many obligations and distractions, Journaling returns us to ourselves day in and day out.
- Unjudged writing practice. I am trying to get in the habit of not judging any of my writing but rather just letting it happen. This isn’t always easy but I’m able to do it with my journal. As a writer, I think this daily period of unjudged writing time is important.
- A collection of my thoughts. It’s been important for me to have this collection of my thoughts. There are memories that I forget but can then access again in my journals. There are patterns of behavior that I only see when I re-read my journals. There are characters and projects that I thought of in passing that I revive when reminded of them by my journals.
I’m not the only one who believes that a journal offers many benefits. Take a look at some thoughts other people have posted on the benefits of journaling:
- 7 Benefits of Journaling. Thoughts on how journaling helps you to identify, preserve and explore your ideas.
- And another 7 benefits of journaling - this one as it specifically applies to writers.
- The Benefits of Journaling as outlined by two women who created their own powerful journal for others to use.
- Uses and benefits of journaling - this is an academic article on the topic.
- Health Benefits of Journaling (including the benefit of stress management)
- And the ultimate post on the topic - 100 benefits of journaling.
Surely we can all get something out of journaling. Do you journal? Does it help your writing? What has been the great benefit?
I tend to be pretty open about myself. I don’t really keep secrets or try to hide aspects of who I am. But there’s something about me that most people in my life probably don’t know. I have a secret place in my heart that loves country music.
I think that the reason that I adore this genre of music so much is because I look at it through a writer’s eyes. Some of the reasons that I end up loving country songs include:
- So many of the lines are so simple. With every other type of music that I listen to, there is a lot of nuanced language and metaphors. That’s great. But I think there’s value in being able to just say what you want to say in a straightforward way. That’s what you get with country music.
- The surprises make me smile. I love writing that catches me off guard. Occasionally, you do get a complex metaphor thrown into these lyrics and it’s shocking and usually amusing.
- The topics are so basic. Country music songs are only really about a handful of different things. And yet they find new ways to say the same things over and over. Maybe this is true of other genres too but I think it’s truer of country music.
- It rhymes. What can I say? I love that I can easily learn the words to a song the first time that it’s played because it rhymes so obviously. It’s basic poetry at its best.
- Personality shines through. The character that is singing really pours out his heart to you. A good writer does the same thing. I love it.
Incidentally, I don’t actively try to keep this a secret. I just don’t ever end up really playing my own music around other people so it’s not something that ever comes up. Truth is, most people who know me probably wouldn’t be at all surprised by it even though they didn’t know.
I love quotations. I love finding those phrases that someone else said which I wish that I would have said myself. I take comfort in the words of other people when I can’t quite say what it is that I want to say. And I enjoy sharing quotes with others who feel this way about writing.
The problem is that I’ve never really been very organized about keeping my quotes written down so that I could return to them. I’ve tried to keep quote journals off and on but I always stop writing in them sooner rather than later. I’ve tried to keep an ongoing Word document filled with my favorite quotes (which is great because I can then search easily through them to find things I’m looking for) but I always stop this too. I’ve also done some wackier things in my lifetime like writing my favorite quotes in Sharpie all over one of my bathrooms and emailing quotes to myself so I’d have them in my inbox.
None of these things really worked. These days, I do a combination of things. I write down quotes that I really like and make collages around them which I keep in a notebook. I blog quotes and post them on my social networking sites so at least they’re online somewhere that I can access them. But it’s still pretty disorganized.
Do you have a good method of organizing your favorite quotes?
