Points to ponder
♠1. Good girls and good boys rarely grow up to become good writers.
♠2. The good in good person and the good in good book is almost never the same thing.
♠3. You can’t have a good book full of only good people.
♠4. A bad book is almost never bad because of the bad people in it. If anything, good bad characters make a book super good.
♠5. A writer cannot be all good if s/he wants to write a good book. Bad thoughts generate good ideas.
♠6. A writer cannot draw from only good experiences in life if s/he wants to be a good writer. No experience is too bad, too low, too shallow, too trite or too inconsequential to be put in a good book.
♠7. No book can be too bad, too racy, too objectionable or too shallow to be read by a person who aspires to write with an open mind.
♠8. No task or company is beneath a writer. A writer must do as many kinds of work, get to know as many kinds of people, get into as many situations as possible.
♠9. A writer has to be a gossip. Absorb other people’s lives, see them up close and personal, and then imagine the rest. Be as curious as possible about others.
♠10. A writer has to be present wherever there is drama, observe, yet be detached and not get sucked in so all points of views remain clear.
♠♠
bottledworder 
Interesting indeed – especially the ‘good book bad ideas’ thing. Enjoyed this: thanks.
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Reblogged this on Such A Beautiful Disaster.
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First-rate article, but I’ve got a short question… how does one defend against spammy responses more successfully? I neutralize a lot, yet it looks like there’s
lots of comments which survive through. I’m really considering preventing every one of them, however I want to keep some level of activity on my blog. What can I do?
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These are good tips, but I have a caveat. Actually, a couple of them. I was pretty much a ‘good’ girl, whatever that may mean. So, I think being compassionate towards others’ ‘badnesses’ is good for writing if you don’t have enough of your own. The other caveat is: What about books like ‘Little Women’? Granted, Louisa May hated her own books, or at least disliked them, and thought of them as pap for the masses, but that book has become a classic! I read all her books growing up, which didn’t do much to send me experimenting on the dark side. I heard they had cookies there, though….
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So good it’s bad. or…vice versa.
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