Last year I published a blog like this with quotes from the darker side of writer’s minds. In an attempt to balance this a little, and in the spirit of a new year, new hopes, new dreams and positive thinking, here is a collection of the great and the good, giving advice on positivity, that thing we are told has a power to it… It is not normally my thing but what the hell, it’s a new year, if you can’t be positive right at the start of one, when can you be…

Why not go out on a limb, that’s where the fruit is.  ~ Mark Twain

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says I’m Possible. ~ Audrey Hepburn

A drop of ink may make a million think. ~ Lord Byron

It is perfectly okay to write garbage-as long as you edit brilliantly. ~ C.J.Cherryh

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favour. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

Okay so positives good, but strangely hard to find, so I ended up going a little darker than intended with this post… sorry… and back to Edgar…

I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write. ~ Terry Pratchett

Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences. ~ Anne McCaffrey

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

And thanks to Robert for that one…

Moving on to a bit of advice from the great and good…

All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences. ~ Somerset Maugham

First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him! ~ Ray Bradbury

I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose. ~ Stephen King

I get my best writing done when I’m supposed to be doing something else entirely. And that’s why I keep my day job. ~ Joyce Rachelle

The last one sums me up… well, that and the need to pay the mortgage…

Finally the last word from Joel Osteen, which seems apt given my normally jaded view of the world…