Anne Lamott’s Twelve Truths

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“If you don’t know where to start, remember that every single thing that happened to you is yours and you get to tell it.” In this TED Talk, Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (Anchor Books, 1995), shares twelve truths she’s learned from life and her writing.

Camille T. Dungy

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“What you can do is tell your best story, at that moment.” Camille T. Dungy, whose first essay collection, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood, and History (Norton, 2017), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, offers writers advice on how to overcome roadblocks in this Austin Community College video.

Blair Hurley on Imaginative Empathy

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“The more that I wrote I discovered that writing in a pretty way actually wasn’t the goal,” says Blair Hurley about breaking down good writing and prioritizing writing clearly with characters that feel real in this interview with Junia Doan. Hurley’s essay “Tiny Doable Things” is featured in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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Arthur Sze

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“When you think you’re getting good, be humble. There’s no end to the learning.” In this video, Arthur Sze visits his high school, the Lawrenceville School, and offers advice from his years of experience as a poet. Sze is the recipient of the 2013 Jackson Poetry Prize and won the 2019 National Book Award in poetry for his collection Sight Lines (Copper Canyon Press, 2019).

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Sarah Moss

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“I don’t really think you can teach people to write, you can just teach them to read. Read everything you can about your setting or your characters or whatever it is you don’t know.” In this Granta video, Sarah Moss, the author most recently of Ghost Wall (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), offers advice on first drafts, research, and the importance of reading to a writer.

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How to Keep Writing

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“Be very patient, even patient with chaos,” Lydia Davis advises writers in this compilation of interviews by Louisiana Channel. Seasoned writers from around the world, including Alaa Al Aswany, Umberto Eco, Richard Ford, Patti Smith, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, also offer their thoughts on how to keep writing.

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