Writing Quotes - Page 15

You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse...go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside.

Rule number four for me as a writer? Plotlines are like sharks: They either keep moving or they die. ~J.R. Ward

I don't mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way--characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don't fit, the whole works--is simply asking too much of a reader. Something happening in a phony way must beat nothing happening in a phony way every time, right? I mean, you could prove that, mathematically, in an equation, and you can't often apply science to literature.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.To hear the immense night, still more immense without her,And the verse falls to the snow like dew to the pasture.

Being a writer is a good, good thing.

Be a worthy worker and work will come.

What people dont know about you people create. Imagination is a part of being human. They fill in the unknowns with assumptions and not facts. Every man and woman is a mystery unrevealed.

Able writers let us into their minds and show us how they think and by that open our minds to ourselves

If God gives you a gift and you don't know what to do with it, it won't make you happy. Some of you God gave a wonderful husband but you can't make a home and some of you God gave a wonderful wife but you can't make a good husband. Some of you can't even unwrap the gift so that you can appreciate it.

And yet their reward appear not, and their labor had no fruit: for I have gone here and there through the heathen, and I see that they flow in wealth, and think not upon thy commandments.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.

The gift of knowledge is empowering, but the gift of wisdom is life-changing.

Young people ask why I became a writer, as if it were something I decided. I didn't decide; it grew on me like ivy.

Every book has its ancestors

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

These be they that have put off the mortal clothing, and put on the immortal, and have confessed the name of God: now are they crowned, and receive palms.

A deadline is, simply put, optimism in its most kick-ass form. It's a potent force that, when wielded with respect, will level any obstacle in its path. This is especially true when it comes to creative pursuits.

Write it down and it will come alive.

Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I'm considering is an enormous help.

Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.

I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into the distant past: I am so sure that everything we now take for granted is going to be utterly swept away in the next d

Writing is one of the best therapies that exist. Either on paper, computer, phone or tablet, in any form it is helpful. Whenever you feel like writing, just do it. Let the words flow out of your mind and heart. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but you. Some people may find easier to express themselves in writing than verbally. While you will have time to choose the best words, you will also escape the fear of immediate reaction. Take your time and play with the words until you feel you got them right. One can write about anything. About a dream, a fantasy, a love story, happenings during the day, an apology or a greeting, everything is permitted in the world of writing. There it is no good or bad.

Sometimes the things in our heads are far worse than anything they could put in books or on film!!

If you really want to possess a woman, you must think like her, and the first thing to do is win over her soul. The rest, that sweet, soft wrapping that steals away your senses and your virtue, is a bonus.

The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement.

My lips are fierce with passion. My heart spins fiery beats. A rhythm lives within my fingers and dances in my feet.

The words get easier the moment you stop fearing them.

Slartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library.

To me, the single biggest mark of the amateur writer is a sense of hurry.Hurry to finish a manuscript, hurry to edit it, hurry to publish it. It’s definitely possible to write a book in a month, leave it unedited, and watch it go off into the world and be declared a masterpiece. It happens every fifty years or so.For the rest of us, the single greatest ally we have is time. There’s no page of prose in existence that its author can’t improve after it’s been in a drawer for a week. The same is true on the macro level – every time I finish a story or a book, I try to put it away and forget it for as long as I can. When I return, its problems are often so obvious and easy to fix that I’m amazed I ever struggled with them.Amateur writers are usually desperate to be published, as soon as possible. And I understand that feeling – you just want it to start, your career, your next book, whatever. But I wonder how many self-published novels might have had a chance at getting bought, and finding more readers, if their authors had a bit more patience with them?

You enter a book as if you are setting out on a journey and, if it is a good book, you will be a different person when you reach the end.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

Writing comes from the fear of failure not from the joy of winning.

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

[Patricia Highsmith] was a figure of contradictions: a lesbian who didn't particularly like women; a writer of the most insightful psychological novels who, at times, appeared bored by people; a misanthrope with a gentle, sweet nature.

The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoilism - a kind of pelting of pretentious literature with dung, lest the writers get above themselves; it is to the novelist what the gown of humiliation was to the Roman politician - a salutary ordeal. Less grandly, bad reviews are fun, so long as you are not the author. There is, it must be admitted, a kind of furtive blood sport pleasure in seeing a novelist suffer. You read on. Whereas most of us stop reading at the first use of the word 'splendid' or 'marvellous' in a review.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell.

We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.

In this place called Hell novels are written by people who don't read books.

Writers say two things that strike me as nonsense. One is that you must follow an absolute schedule everyday. If you're not writing well, why continue it? I just don't think this grinding away is useful.

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day a novel should not be interrupted.

Most people say, “Show, don’t tell,” but I stand by Show and Tell, because when writers put their work out into the world, they’re like kids bringing their broken unicorns and chewed-up teddy bears into class in the sad hope that someone else will love them as much as they do.

Life is more than one genre'.

In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.

I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.

It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

I am driven. Being driven is my energy source. It is my fun.…I believe that where there is action, there is movement, and those ripples will eventually produce something positive.

I write because, if I don't, my characters will murder me in my sleep.

I do not have any trust fund, I have always trusted God for all my funds.

I began writing about power because I had so little.

The conflict hasn't gotten worst but the contest has really changed.............

He honestly expected her to believe that she could make a bad offering and her ancestors wouldn't mind.

As thou know not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou know not the works of what makes all.

I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography.

Modern tragic writers have to write short stories; if they wrote long stories…cheerfulness would creep in. Such stories are like stings; brief, but purely painful.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Write your sacred story.