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September 02, 2015

Thornton Wilder’s advice to aspiring writers

    The main reason young writers fail is that they take up their pen before they have accumulated experience:

    As to the young people who are going into writing — I beg them to have no impatience to be published. I tell them that the notion of acquiring some reputation in order to impress parents and friends is one of the enemies of good writing.
    Do not aspire to earn your living by your pen — get some job to support you while you write at midnight, and take a job as little connected with writing as possible — teaching mathematics, I think, would be splendid. Having a gas station on the New Mexican desert would be wonderful.

    (Quoted from page 174 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Thornton Wilder, click here. For images of or relating to Thornton Wilder, click here.

September 02, 2015 |

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Books by H. Charles Romesburg

  • H. Charles Romesburg: The Life of the Creative Spirit

    H. Charles Romesburg: The Life of the Creative Spirit
    Practically all of the quotations in this blog's posts are collected in "The Life of the Creative Spirit."

  • H. Charles Romesburg: How About It, Writer?

    H. Charles Romesburg: How About It, Writer?
    Based on a study of more than 12,000 essays from the very best literary magazines, this book provides writers with lists of thousands of classic forms of opening sentences, titles, transition sentences, ways of saying "for example," and ways of closing nonfiction pieces. When you are writing an essay and want a hint for a better or fresh way of saying what you mean, looking through the lists acts on the imagination, stimulating your creativity. From Lulu Press (ISBN 1-4116-2862-4, 194 pp., softback), it's $16.95 when ordered from Lulu.com/Romesburg , and $22.95 from bookstores. To view its cover, click on www.cnr.usu.edu/romesburg/how_about_it_writer.htm To view its title page, contents, and first two chapters, click on: www.cnr.usu.edu/romesburg/how_about_it_writer_preview.pdf

  • H Charles Romesburg: Best Research Practices

    H Charles Romesburg: Best Research Practices
    The Saunterer’s new book (2009), Best Research Practices explains how to plan and carry out reliable experiments, how to conceive and circumstantially support research hypotheses, how to test research hypotheses with the hypothetico-deductive method, how to discover cause and effect, and more. It’s based on his examination of 5,000 top scientific articles, studying the methods used to produce reliable knowledge. Preview it on-line by going to the following link: http://print.google.com/print?isbn=9780557017836

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