Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
Lynne TrussRead
All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Protect your creative work until it is complete to avoid discouragement.
Lynne Truss emphasizes the importance of keeping your creative endeavors private until they are fully developed. Sharing early ideas can lead to external criticism or doubt, which may undermine your confidence and motivation, potentially derailing your project altogether.
Themes
CreativityWritingProtectionConfidenceDiscouragement
In practice
Example use cases
A writer may use this quote to encourage fellow authors at a workshop.
More from Lynne Truss
All quotes →In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.
Lynne TrussRead
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