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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.

Jane Yolen

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Jane Yolen
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: February 11
Editor
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Jane Hyatt Yolen
Jane Hyatt Yolen Stemple
Jane H. Yolen Stemple
Without
List
Muscle
Writing
Lists
Athletes
Even
Athlete
Journal
Every
Notes
Title
Like
Letters
Letter
Sketch
Writers
Dancer
Dancers
Exercise
Titles
Seize
Character
Muscles
Entry

More quotes by Jane Yolen

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They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.
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Love the writing, love the writing, love the writing... the rest will follow.
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Language helps develp life as surely as it reflects life. It is a most important part of our human condition.
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You write to be read. That is the bottom line.
Jane Yolen
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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.
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If you love a waist, you waste a love.
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It is the last thing we learn, / listening to the creature world.
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Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing. They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas you've gathered.
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Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that some people survived even as most people died. And can remind us that the swallows still sing around the smokestacks.
Jane Yolen
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You are a name, not a number. Never forget that name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be Chaya—life—to me.
Jane Yolen
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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.
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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.
Jane Yolen
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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.
Jane Yolen
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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.
Jane Yolen
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Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.
Jane Yolen
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If you want to write, you write. Talent is simply not enough.
Jane Yolen
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Exercise the writing muscle every day.
Jane Yolen
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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.
Jane Yolen
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Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.
Jane Yolen
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A child who can love the oddities of a fantasy book cannot possibly be xenophobic as an adult. What is a different color, a different culture, a different tongue for a child who has already mastered Elvish, respected Puddleglums, or fallen under the spell of dark-skinned Ged?
Jane Yolen