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1a7f5f3
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I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
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reading
books
inspirational
on-writing
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Robert Louis Stevenson |
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cff0ccf
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A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
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money
women
writing
virgin
on-writing
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Virginia Woolf |
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f0a826d
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It's amazing that a man who is dead can talk to people through these pages. As long as this books survives, his ideas live.
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on-writing
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Christopher Paolini |
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6423592
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If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.
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on-writing
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Stephen King |
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f5ffe24
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"There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pate."
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epigrams
fandom
similes
on-writing
disappointment
writers
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Margaret Atwood |
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42dfcd2
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I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.
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on-writing
storytelling
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Philip Pullman |
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18a0cb3
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In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?
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destiny
inspirational
art
on-writing
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Rainer Maria Rilke |
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9bb3040
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I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.
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on-writing
storytelling
stories
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Stephen King |
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2ae82ca
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Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.
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on-writing
writers
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Dan Brown |
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8639bb7
|
"Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?"
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criticism
inspiration
reviewing
critique
reviews
on-writing
creative-process
writers
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Connie Willis |
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a966473
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All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.
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writing
on-writing
storytelling
stories
|
Umberto Eco |
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03de912
|
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention!
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on-writing
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William Shakespeare |
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44f93fc
|
In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book. All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try. And no one can help me. Not even you.
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on-writing
|
Ray Bradbury |
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b706ed4
|
I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.
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on-writing
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John Steinbeck |
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805d64c
|
Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason -- if the worlds are in any way blurred -- the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'.
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words
writing
advice
on-writing
language
|
Raymond Carver |
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4874522
|
V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -- that word again -- have even further ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things -- like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes.
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words
writing
design
on-writing
|
Raymond Carver |
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6be2fb8
|
A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man can become, everything he's capable of. Novelists draw up the map of existence by discovering this or that human possibilit. But again, to exist mean: 'being-in-the-world.' Thus both the character and his world must be understood as possibilities.
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possibilities
on-writing
novel
|
Milan Kundera |
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398cc17
|
"I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost," while looking for his glasses, and that they were on top of his head."
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writer
writing
authoring
authors
write
on-writing
writers
|
Anne Lamott |
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710df0e
|
One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.
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writing-life
on-writing-a-book
on-writing
|
Annie Dillard |
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43311a4
|
For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.
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writer
writing
the-writing-process
writing-advice
write
on-writing
|
Anne Lamott |
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c2e4244
|
There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.
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|
writer
writing
bird-by-bird
the-writing-process
writing-help
writing-advice
write
on-writing
|
Anne Lamott |
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1b7af55
|
"I would write: "The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the split yam." Or: "The child's clumsy fingers fumbled in sleep, feeling vainly for the wish of its dream." "The old man huddled in the dark doorway, his bony face lit by the burning yellow in the windows of distant skycrapers." My purpose was to capture a physical state or movement that carried a strong subjective impression, an accomplishment which seemed supremely worth struggling for. If I could fasten the mind of the reader upon words so firmly that he would forget words and be conscious only of his response, I felt that I would be in sight of knowing how to write narrative."
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swooning-over-sentences
writing-advice
on-writing
writing-process
|
Richard Wright |
|
e41a1b8
|
I had come to the conclusion - based on experience - that the only real way of learning to write a novel was probably to write a novel.
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|
writing
on-writing
|
Diana Gabaldon |
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46077ce
|
It's the Abstract Expressionist approach to publishing. Throw ink at paper. Hope for pattern to emerge.
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on-writing
|
Jay McInerney |
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c03e9de
|
For the next fortnight Anne writhed or reveled, according to the mood, in her literary pursuits. Now she would be jubilant over a brilliant idea, now despairing because some contrary character would not behave properly. Diana could not understand this. 'Make them do as you want them to,' she said. 'I can't,' mourned Anne. 'Averil is such an unmanageable heroine. She will do and say things I never meant her to. Then that spoils everything that went before and I have to write it all over again.
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|
the-writing-process
on-writing
novelists
|
L.M. Montgomery |
|
693ca50
|
Why one goes on writing when one sees what writing can be - and what one's own writing is not. Aldous Huxley
|
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on-writing
|
Nicholas Murray |
|
de54d30
|
All deeply good characters in imaginative literature, have to be, as it were, diluted with weakness or eccentricity; for only on such conditions are they comprehensible by readers and expressible by writers. Aldous Huxley
|
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on-writing
|
Nicholas Murray |