Writing Quotes - Page 12

The journey from the head to the hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write—and many of the people who do write—get lost.

Writing at its best is simply taking dictation from your soul.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

The only thing better than a well-read book is a well-read book only read by yourself.

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof Ihope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am notunderstood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profoundis couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentenceis printed in a different character shall be judged to contain somethingextraordinary either of wit or sublime.

But it wouldn’t have half the power of a story in which Jamie and Claire truly conquer real evil and thus show what real love is. Real love has real costs—and they’re worth it. I’ve always said all my books have a shape, and Outlander’s internal geometry consists of three slightly overlapping triangles. The apex of each triangle is one of the three emotional climaxes of the book: 1) when Claire makes her wrenching choice at the stones and stays with Jamie, 2) when she saves Jamie from Wentworth, and 3) when she saves his soul at the abbey. It would still be a good story if I’d had only 1 and 2—but (see above), the Rule of Three. A story that goes one, two, three, has a lot more impact than just a one–two punch.

Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging on to something useless just because you think it's beautiful?...Simplify, simplify.

Talent and work ethic are nothing without belief.

The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.

That's the trouble with good writers. Only the bad ones make you want to do the human thing and look away.

The author relates that the word "OBSCENE" springs from the concept in Greek drama that certain actions would be performed outside the scene or off the stage. He clarifies that the Greeks did not shy away from shocking actions, but they knew that portraying them in the audience's view would drown out the emotional subtlety of the character development and ethical dilemmas.

grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.

When you don't have the pressure of pleasing someone else and do something because you love doing it, that's when the best works are born.

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary

Writing is a competition between the writer and the page. When the page wins, you fail as a writer.

Go thy way, and tell my people, the people of thy Lord God what manner of things, and how great wonders of the Lord thy God, thou hast seen.

Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practising it.

Good fiction creates its own reality.

[T]he reason why Shakespeare and Pushkin were great writers was because from the time when they were boys they stood like policemen over their thoughts and didn't allow one small insincerity to creep in.

It’s not so much about writing the story of Christmas itself, as ingenious as it is. In reality, it’s much more about writing the story of Christmas into the story of life so that it will become the story of life.

A jewelled garden the envy of Aladdin's cave spilled across the courtyard.

What do you do when your head - your imagination is filled with tales to last a hundred lifetimes?You focus on the really good ones!

You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

Storytelling? God started that. Discovery. Lust. Murder. Revenge. Power. Sin. Redemption. Forgiveness. Miracles. We simply retell the stories in the language of our generation.

No, it’s not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

You should really stay true to your own style. When I first started writing, everybody said to me, 'Your style just isn't right because you don't use the really flowery language that romances have.' My romances - compared to what's out there - are very strange, very odd, very different. And I think that's one of the reasons they're selling.

An author is like an incompetent bricklayer - doesn't use mortar and keeps rearranging the bricks until someone tells him to stop.

you must not come lightly to the blank page.

We live in a society that doesn’t offer any support or appreciation for ventures that aren’t clearly articulated and aligned for a goal. A writer gets past this. It’s going to be a mess before you’re finished, and you may not have a name for the mess or understand its utilitarian purposes. There aren't words for everything. For now, we’ll call it the draft of a story.

He was a humorist, and everyone knew the funny writers were the most serious sort under their skins.

If you wish to be a writer– then write, and don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’re on the ‘wrong’ path. You know where you’re going, and each word you write gets you a step closer.

What is it that frightens us about a "novel of causes", and conversely, does fiction have to exist in some suspended, apolitical landscape in order to be literary? Can it not politically and temporally specific and still be in good literary taste? We are leery of literature that smacks of the polemic, instructional, or prescriptive, and I guess rightly so--it's a drag to be lectured to--but what does that imply about our attitudes towards intellectual inquiry? While I enjoy reading kitchen-table novels in which characters are distilled to their emotional essence and their lives stripped of politics and commerce, it simply is not reflective of my experience. I see our lives as being a part of an enormous web of interconnected spheres, where the workings of the larger social, political, and corporate machinery impact something as private and intimate as the descent of an egg through a woman's fallopian tube. This is the resonance I want to conjure in my books.I want to write novels that engage the emotions and the intellect, and that means going head to head with the chaos of evils and issues that threaten to overpower us all. And if they threaten to overpower the characters, then I have to make the characters stronger.

Francie always remembered what that kind teacher told her. “You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you’re making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not the truth as people see the truth. In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won’t get mixed up.

I am so happy that I grew up knowing the word of God, the spirit of discernment in me is 24hrs activated, I can differentiate between light and darkness. I put on the amour of God even when the whole world is going to hell, I refuse to join them. The light in me shall overshadow every power of darkness.

Flow is something the reader experiences, not the writer.

Sylvia would have taken it seriously- so strong was her devotion to the innate intelligence of form. Those pretty tools like glue and pens, pasting together look-books – for Sylvia it would have been like toy making or arranging jewels. Unfortunately, Sylvia’s flair for design and graphics went unnoticed by the Mademoiselle staff, who had already pigeonholed her as a “writer”.

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.

Never ask about the details of someone's personal life, only the quality. Because if they want you to know, they'll let you know. If they don't want you to know, there is no need to know.

When you learn to have the heart of praise in the presence of your enemies, you set the table; if you can work with God in darkness enough depending on the light that He showed you in the last season, you will learn to read your enemies as a sign that it is time to eat. ( a bit deep). Whenever you sense a crisis in your life, note that your harvest is near.

A writer who writes more than he reads is an amateur.

The thing that had been, it is that which shall be; And that which is done is that which shall be done.

I am sorry, I am not a writer. I simply put my thoughts on paper. Those helped by them call them a book and me a writer. Those who are not helped call it rubbish and me a fool. Both have reason.

I had another reason for seeking Him, for trying to espy His face, a professional one. God and literature are conflated in my mind. Why this is, I’m not sure. Perhaps because great books seem heavensent. Perhaps because I know that each nove is a puny but very valiant attempt at godlike behavior. Perhaps because there is no difference between the finest poetry and most transcendent mysticism. Perhaps because writers like Thomas Merton, who are able to enter the realm of the spirit and come away with fine, lucid prose. Perhaps because of more secular writers, like John Steinbeck, whose every passage, it seems to me, peals with religiousity and faith. It once occured to me that literature — all art really — is either talking to people about God, or talking to God about people.

For me, at least, fiction is the only way i can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist’s materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feelings, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectators, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Being a writer all boils down to this: It's you, in a chair, staring at a page. And you're either going to stay in that chair until words are written, or you're going to give up and walk away. The great writers have to fight for their words. They have to choose to write, choose words over distractions, and their characters over their friends. Great writers can be lonely, exhausted souls. But through our characters, we live.

The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.

Bring on the controversy. I write real life. It's harsh and sometimes gritty, but it's real. Why should we tip toe around that?

As long as one person reads the bullshit I put on paper, and likes it, i'll keep writing.

An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation, and it seems most true when it eschews artistic devices of any sort.

the caress of each word becoming                 one   with the pagetwisting          beneath the touch of the pen                     forming a trail of permanent kisses                  until they reach me

The history of my life is the history of the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of circumstances bent on keeping me from it.

Clear visions and positive goals, leads to positive actions and purposeful life.

Do you like reading? It's the best thing that can happen to you in life. Writing has other implications.

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted.