WRITING TIPS from Eudora Welty, born April 13, 1909 (d. 2001)

photo credit: The Paris Review

To write like this:

When they turned off, it was still early in the pink and green fields. The fumes of morning, sweet and bitter, sprang up where they walked. The insects ticked softly, their strength in reserve; butterflies chopped the air, going to the east, and the birds flew carelessly and sang by fits and starts, not the way they did in the evening in sustained and drowsy songs.

Here are some tips:

• To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most.
• The first act of insight is throw away the labels.
• If you haven’t surprised yourself, you haven’t written.
• One place understood helps us understand all places better.
• Greater than scene is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame.
• No art ever came out of not risking your neck.
• My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.
• It doesn’t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.
• All serious daring starts from within.