Celebrating 40 Years of Summer Camp at The Highlights Foundation!

2025 is the 40th anniversary of our Summer Camps! To celebrate, we’ve gathered 40 sparkling bits of inspiration shared by our faculty over the years.

“To be a writer takes courage. It asks of you to go through doors you haven’t been before, to take pathways into the unknown.”

“You’ll never be a writer if you don’t carve out time to write…the dishes can wait.”

“You can’t start thinking there are no more ideas, because the universe is full of ideas…if you are open to them.”

“Do you want to write or have the cleanest house in town?  We have to make choices like that.”

“The time to write a story is when you can no longer contain it!”

“Who knows what will happen to our books if we put our heart and soul into them?”

“Some of the BEST stories bubble up from the recesses of who and what you are.”

“Trust your instincts. Trust the deepest storyteller in you.”

“There is in you, story. There is in you, voice. But if the outside voices are so loud you cannot hear your own voice, how will you know that it is there?”

“The most important gift a writer can give himself is the habit of work. It will carry you through the anxiety and despair of the process.”

“You just can’t become a writer if you start fifty different projects and half-finish them.  FINISH something.”

“Ideas:  you just kind of work at one, listen to it, peel off layers until you’ve found the story that’s already there.”

“This is key: you have to write the book you love, the book that’s alive in your heart. That’s the one you have to write.”

“Many times, original story comes from letting go.”

“As a writer, you have to risk scraping the soul, because that is where the original stuff is.”

“What you are seeps into your fiction, no matter how hard you try to keep it out.  What you are is what you write.”

“Creativity is like a muscle; the more you flex that creativity, the bigger it gets. The more creative you are, the more creative you become.”

“Writers & artists: Be willing to be creatively sidetracked. Just realize the difference between an intrusion and an opportunity.”

“Whatever keeps you writing is good. Whatever prevents you from writing is evil.  Figure out what keeps you writing and go with it.”

“The only way to get anything written at all is to write really, really bad first drafts.  You have to put it down.”

“Every writer who is published started with the first word on the first page of a manuscript.”

“Writers for children: are you helping the reader discover a light in the darkness?”

“When we writers finally become immersed in a story and know the power of it, it’s virtually a religious experience.  There is a sense of something working beyond ourselves, and we know why we write.”

“Most people aren’t uncentered enough to write for the young, but we are not most people.”

“Give readers something that will lift them up, take them away from the humdrum.”

“So many books in the world, why bother writing another?  Because it’s going to be YOUR book, filtered through YOUR mind & YOUR imagination.”

“Being a writer depends on who you are, what you are, where you have been and what you have done.”

“We are the writers of words. We enjoy, marvel, fear, love, worship & revel in them. Your words have the power to change young lives.”

“To write for children: you must be direct, you must be honest, and you must risk exposure of the child within you.”

“Fear is the underlying thing that gets in the way of creativity and art. The answer to this fear is to take baby steps toward your craft.”

“There is no new topic. Everythng has been written about – but nobody has written about it with the exact perspective you can bring to it. That’s where your creativity comes in.”

“You’ve got to be in love with the book you’ve written, and you’ve got to believe it.”

“You need to get on with your failures. The sooner you get your failures behind you, the sooner you’re going to succeed. Guaranteed.”

“The thing about rejection is everybody gets it. It’s not whether or not you get it. It’s what you do with it.”

“When publication comes, that’s the icing on the cake, but the cake is good whether you’re published or not.”

“Take your rejections in context, and remember that editors are not your audience. They are the VEHICLE to your audience.”

“A rejection letter is one person’s opinion of your writing. There are as many opinions on a piece of writing as there are editors to offer them. Editors need writers as much writers need editors.”

“Publishing doesn’t make you a writer.  What makes you a writer is writing.”

“When you send your manuscripts know that you are sending it to someone with a history, someone who loves words, someone who loves books.”

“Failure can be a stepping stone on to the next failure. By stepping from failure to failure, you can cross the creek.”