Writing Advice Quotes - Page 10

Writing is an adventure. There is no way to know where it will take you, and what you will find. You could find success. You could find fans. Or, best of all, you could find yourself.

It's okay to write crap. Just don't try publishing it while it's still crap.

Keep being bold on the page, and in life, and people cannot ignore you forever.

Writing starts with living.—Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing

Writing as a creative art flourishes only when there are no rules. Rules stifle you from entering the silent and forbidden spaces where the core of the story is waiting to be revealed.

I have no talent; it's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond. The good news is that the acts of searching and gathering always expand the number of usable words.

Sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one.

There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.

Authors, such as William Zinsser, Steven Pinker, Natalie Goldberg, and Stephen King, who have all written exquisite books on the art and craft of writing, have reminded me that it is the commitment to the craft that matters the most; the longing to get better and the countless hours of work that go into writing and rewriting. To them I am eternally grateful.

Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.

A direct relationship exists between the caliber of the writing you read and the caliber of the writing you make.

If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.

For me, art that's alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.

One expert may be as good as another until one writes a book

When I write sometimes I strike gold, sometimes I labor in vain and keep producing rubbish

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

Write what you want to write and would like to read, not for any invisible audience. Your readers will find you.

Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you’ve written. Comedy pushes limits, makes people uncomfortable, and is a natural reaction to the environment. Otherwise, as I said, it is forced. Let it flow and give your characters permission to cross a line or two, but only if you can take the heat afterward.

If you are afraid of the critics you will never write a word

Perfectionism is the enemy of the author. There is a difference between good writing habits and perfectionism. The author who displays good writing habits delivers on time. The aspiring author who is prone to perfectionism will likely never fin...

A real piece of writing is one in which the writer has tried to enrich not only the book, but also his understanding of the words. The words themselves have to be open to new ideas and suggestions, and the writer himself must have the audacity to attempt new things and to risk failure

A writer will always be a writer. It's not a choice, it's a destiny.

If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.

WHILE writing, just try to have fun with your ms. Enjoy the process, but push on. Always push toward the finish line!

Rhythm, repetition, making patterns--these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or a story, but they are craved as well because of our primordial need for reassurance, the sense of security we get from moving over the known. A mystery doesn't lose power in revisiting. Writing is not just to know, it is also to console. We need to be reminded that we are part of the obscure rhythm of birth and decade. It is the humming that matters.

... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.

...how many writers still dare compare a woman to Nature, like Campion? - there is a garden in her face - how lovely...

I can tell you that the writing of a book, no matter how deeply, profoundly personal-if it is literature, if you have attended to the formidable task of illumination the human heart in conflict with itself-will do the opposite of expose you. It will connect you. With others. With the world around you. With yourself.

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don't feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you're wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done.

Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.

writing - like any art - is so damned personal that there really isn't a right way to do it. You do what works for you; what matters is getting the words on the paper. Sure, if you hear advice, and it works, then excellent. But, if it doesn't, you have to realize that perhaps nothing is wrong with you. You don't jive with the advice.

Some artists benefit less from being interviewed than they do from being left alone.

Never underestimate the power of the written word, especially when you put them down in your own voice." -Cheryl L. Ilov, Forever Fit and Flexible: Feeling Fabulous at Fifty and Beyond.

Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: "At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You'd be surprised how effective it can be.

On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost all of us will produce a lot of really lousy stories before we start to get good. (Not all of us will choose to publish those lousy stories, but that's a whole separate discussion...)

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you’ll end up with less of either.

Every book is worth reading. If it cannot make you wiser it will make you a critic

Be brave to share your story! Each of our stories, have a golden treasure for a specific need.

Build your novel one word at a time. Remember that minutes = novels.

If you have a machine with three or four parts, you can shake them up in a box and it's still pretty clear what's there. If you have a machine with 10,000 parts and you shake them up in a box, what you have is a box of junk.

Many writers write because they’ve been there, seen that, did it and burnt their fingers

You think you have no ‘talent’? Write anyway. lots of people with ‘talent’ don’t actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have ‘talent.

I don’t get writer's block because I don’t believe in it. I believe you sit in front of the computer and force your fingers to get something on the screen.

...a writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.

Today almost everybody is a writer, the enormous publish button on blogs and websites begs you everywhere to click on it! And bam you are a writer. To hell with agents and publishing houses and rejection letters. Immortality for you is on the click of a mouth! We are advancing at the speed of light! You can become an author at 140 characters. To hell with long winding sentences and long hours of scratching the head, the immortals of today instantly get a "like" and they instantly enter the pantheon! They seat side by side Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, St Paul, Buddha, Martin Luther, Rousseau, Bangambiki…

You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you can’t play it safe.

I tell everyone who asks me about writing...almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough!

Write what you wish with your soul and your heart will fill the page with your unique magic.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear>

I never presume to give advice on writing. I think the best way to learn to write is to read booksand stories by bood writers. It's a hard thing to preach about. As Thelonious Monk once said abouthis field, "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

Remember: Bad timing equals great plot twists.

I am doubtful myself about the undertaking. Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed. Also many of the older legends are purely 'mythological', and nearly all are grim and tragic: a long account of the disasters that destroyed the beauty of the Ancient World, from the darkening of Valinor to the Downfall of Numenor and the flight of Elendil.

To help you fill in the details of the world you are creating, imagine that your characters inhabit a real world. Daydream what it would be like to be there. What would your characters eat, what would they talk about, where would they get their supplies, etc. Keep asking the question, “What happens next?” Show your characters actions and write down their thoughts

Books are like rivers, meandering this way and that, but taking us on a steady, flowing course to somewhere different.

You cannot write if you are not on fire

I know, not everyone will like what I write, but writing is not about trying to please everybody.