Jane Yolen
In college, I wrote newspaper articles and songs. Then, on my 21st birthday, I sold my first book. It was a nonfiction book about women pirates - 'Pirates in Petticoats.' After that, I was a book writer for good.Collection: Birthday
Read something of interest every day - something of interest to you, not to your teacher or your best friend or your minister/rabbi/priest. Comics count. So does poetry. So do editorials in your school newspaper. Or a biography of a rock star. Or an instructional manual. Or the Bible.Collection: Poetry
When you realize my best selling books are 'Owl Moon,' the 'How Do Dinosaur' books, and 'Devil's Arithmetic,' how can the public make sense of that! I have fans who think I only write picture books or only write SF and fantasy. I have fanatics of my poetry and are stunned to find out I write prose, too!Collection: Poetry
I think picture books should stretch children. I think they should be full of wonderful, amazing words.Collection: Amazing
While I was in junior high, I wrote an entire essay in rhyme about manufacturing in New York State. In high school, I won a Scholastic poetry contest.Collection: Poetry
Myths are stories that explain a natural phenomenon. Before humans found scientific explanations for such things as the moon and the sun and rainbows, they tried to understand them by telling stories.
Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.
I began as a journalist for my pocketbook and a poet for my soul.
I write to satisfy the story or poem or piece of fascinating research that speaks to me. To rub a sore, to resonate with joy, to answer a question no one else has satisfactorily answered for me.
I read everything aloud, novels as well as picture books. I believe the eye and ear are different listeners. So as writers, we have to please both.
Why am I working so hard? Going for 400 books, perhaps, but who's really counting?
My beloved husband goes through radiation, and a book of sonnets is my passionate response. And then after he dies, I write another book of poems as a farewell. The two keywords here are passion and joy. I simply have a passion for writing, and I do it with joy.
My youngest son becomes an award-winning nature photographer, and I cannot resist writing poems to his pictures. My daughter loves to cook, though I do not. Yet together, we write a cookbook with fairy tales. And now a second.
If a parent wants to talk about slavery or wants to talk about countries where bombs go off, they need to have a way - a setting - to have that conversation. And there are wonderful books out there for those kinds of conversations.
If you give up at the first rejection or the first bad review, you will never make it in publishing.
I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.
Don't ever write just for a trend or fad, because it's a moving target, and by the time you get your work out there, the trend or fad is gone. Dig deep; don't be afraid to write fiercely. Expose your heart.
Write every day. You don't have to write about anything specific, but you should exercise your writing muscle constantly.
It seems like I've been writing since birth! I started writing poems before I got to school. I wrote the class musical in first grade - both words and music. It was about a bunch of vegetables who got together in a salad. I played the chief carrot!
Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.Collection: Childhood
Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.Collection: Writing
Childrens books change lives. Stories pour into the hearts of children and help make them what they become.Collection: Children
It's never perfect when I write it down the first time, or the second time, or the fifth time. But it always gets better as I go over it and over it.Collection: Writing
Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.Collection: Song
A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.Collection: Book
The magical story is not a microscope but a mirror, not a drop of water but a well. It is not simply one thing or two, but a multitude. It is at once both lucid and opaque, it accepts both dark and light, speaks to youth and old age.Collection: Dark
Time may heal all wounds, but it does not erase the scars.Collection: May
All writers write about themselves, just as the old storytellers chose to tell stories that spoke to and about themselves. They call it the world, but it is themselves they portray. The world of which they write is like a mirror that reflects the inside of their hearts, often more truly than they know.Collection: Writing
What makes a good book? Scholars and critics have been debating that question for decades. I like books that touch my head and my heart at the same time.Collection: Book
Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.Collection: Writing
Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered.Collection: Writing
Get up from your desk and wander outside occasionally. To be a good writer one needs to be a good observer, and there isn't a lot to be observed at desk level.Collection: Needs
I believe that culture begins in the cradle . . .To do without tales and stories and books is to lose humanity's past, is to have no star map for our future.Collection: Stars
Storytelling is our oldest form of remembering the promises we have made to one another and to our various gods, and the promises given in return; it is a way of recording our human emotions and desires and taboos.Collection: Promise
The main plot line is simple: Getting your character to the foot of the tree, getting him up the tree, and then figuring out how to get him down again.Collection: Character
Exercise the writing muscle every day.Collection: Writing
I have always been jealous of artists. The smell of the studio, the names of the various tools, the look of a half-finished canvas all shout of creation. What do writers have in comparison? Only the flat paper, the clacketing of the typewriter or the scrape of a pen across a yellow page. And then, when the finished piece is presented, there is a small wonder on one hand, a manuscript smudged with erasures or crossed out lines on the other. The impact of the painting is immediate, the manuscript must unfold slowly through time.Collection: Jealous
Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the one's that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.Collection: Lying
Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.Collection: Important
If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.Collection: Writing
Touch magic. Pass it on.Collection: Magic
Write, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.Collection: Writing
Wood may remain twenty years in the water, but it is still not a fish.Collection: Years
Intuition works best when you remember that “tuition” is part of it. You need to have paid ahead of time (ie done your prep work) so as to prepare the ground for intuition.Collection: Intuition
You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.Collection: Numbers
Know, my son, that the enemy will always be with you. He will be in the shadow of your dreams and in your living flesh, for he is the other part of yourself.Collection: Dream
Aren't hidden doors the most alluring? The old stories point that out surely. Even the greatest heroes and heroines fall under the spell of a locked door.Collection: Fall
Well,' the Goddess said, 'your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time.Collection: Heart
We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.Collection: Long
What is a vow... but the mouth repeating what the heart has already promised?Collection: Heart