Literary Birthday – 12 January – Jack London

Jack London was born 12 January 1876, and died 22 November 1916.

Jack London: 10 Writing Quotes

1. Merely because you have got some­thing to say that may be of interest to others does not free you from making all due effort to express that something in the best possible medium and form.
2. If you are going to write for success and money, you must deliver to the market marketable goods.
3. Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
4. Don’t write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.
5. Every time a writer tells the truth about a manuscript (or book), to a friend-author, he loses that friend, or sees that friendship dim and fade away to a ghost of what it was formerly.
6. If you want to succeed at a well-paid game, prepare yourself to do the work.
7. Too much is written by the men who can’t write about the men who do write.
8. I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.
9. Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
10. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Jack London was one of the the most successful American writers of the early 20th Century. He was a pioneer in the world of commercial magazine fiction and gained celebrity and earned a large fortune from his writing. His stories of men and animals against the environment, and survival against hardships were drawn from his own experience. At 17, he worked on a sealing ship and then spent years in the Klondike searching for gold. After a brief stint in jail, he decided to turn to education and pursue a career in writing. He is best known for The Call Of The Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf.  He died when he was 40.

Where Jack London wrote

Source for Image:  published by L C Page and Company Boston 1903, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 by Amanda Patterson

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