Remember, your artist is a child. Find and protect that child. Learning to let yourself create is like learning to walk. The artist child must begin by crawling. … Give yourself permission to be a beginner. By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, page 29-30

I like the name writing practices better than Creative Writing. Nobody can teach creative writing: run like made from anybody who thinks he can. But one can teach practices, like finger exercises on the piano; one can share the tools of the trade, and what one has gleaned from the great writers: it is the great writers themselves who do the teaching, rather than the leader of a seminar. It doesn’t take long for the gifted student to realize that there are certain things the great writers always do, and certain things they never do; it is from these that we learn.

Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet, page 60-61