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db8c931 When I first began to write, I had been a child for most of my life, and my childhood memories were vivid and potent, and the forces that shaped me, Most of them have grown fainter with time, and whenever I write one down, I give it away: it ceases to have the shadowy life of memory and becomes fixed in letters: it ceases to be mine; it loses that mobile unreliability of the live. memory nostalgia writing Rebecca Solnit
c76b899 This is what is behind the special relationship between tale and travel, and, perhaps, the reason why narrative writing is so closely bound up with walking. To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain that the author as guide - a guide one may not always agree with our trust, but who can at least be counted upon to take one somewhere. I have have often wished that my sentences could be written out as a single line running into distances so that it would be clear that a sentence is likewise a road and reading is traveling. traveling walking writing Rebecca Solnit
207d343 Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids sex writing Diana Gabaldon
fefd39e "Anyway, it's a pretty good story," I said. "You have to admit." "Yeah?" He crumpled up the Kleenex, having dispatched the solitary tear. "You can have it. I'm giving it to you. After I'm gone, write it down. Explain everything. Make it mean something. Use a lot of those fancy metaphors of yours. Put the whole thing in proper chronological order, not like this mishmash I'm making you. Start with the night I was born. March second, 1915. There was a lunar eclipse that night, you know what that is?" "When the earth's shadow falls across the Moon." "Very significant. I'm sure it's a perfect metaphor for something. Start with that." "Kind of trite." I said. He threw the Kleenex at my head. It bounced off my cheek and fell on the floor. I bent to pick it up. Somewhere in its fibers, it held what may have been the last tear my grandfather ever shed. Out of respect for his insistence on the meaninglessness of life--his, everyone's--I threw it into the wastebasket by the door." writing Michael Chabon
f89d15d Dimenticano che la vita non e qui. Altre leggi, nero su bianco, vigono qui. Un batter d'occhio durera quanto dico io, si lascera dividere in piccole eternita piene di pallottole fermate in volo. Non una cosa avverra qui se non voglio. Senza il mio assenso non cadra foglia, ne si pieghera stelo sotto il punto del piccolo zoccolo. C'e dunque un mondo di cui reggo le sorti indipendenti? Un tempo che lego con catene di segni? Un esistere a mio comando incessante? La gioia di scrivere. Il potere di perpetuare. La vendetta d'una mano mortale. writing Wisława Szymborska
8d0063a There is a kind of despair involved in creation which I am sure any artist knows all about. In art, as in morality, great things go by the board because at the crucial moment we blink our eyes. When is the crucial moment? Greatness is to recognize it and be able to hold it and to extend it. But for most of us the space between 'dreaming on things to come' and 'it is too late, it is all over' is too tiny to enter. And so we let each thing go, thinking vaguely that it will always be given to us to try again. Thus works of art, and thus whole lives of men, are spoilt by blinking and moving quickly on. I often found that I had ideas for stories, but by the time I had thought them out in detail they seemed to me hardly worth writing, as if I had already 'done' them: not because they were bad, but because they already belonged to the past and I had lost interest. My thoughts were soon stale to me. Some things I ruined by starting them too soon. Others by thinking them so intensely in my head that they were over before they began. Projects would change in a second from hazy uncommitted dreams into unsalvageable ancient history. Whole novels existed only in their titles. creative-process crucial-moment elusive inspiration iris-murdoch the-black-prince writer writing Iris Murdoch
4753e09 I struggled with a nebulous work which seemed now a , now a vast novel, wherein a hero not unlike myself pursued, amid ghostly incidents, a series of reflections about life and art. iris-murdoch meta plot struggling the-black-prince writer writing Iris Murdoch
7b24c32 I can arrange words on a page but I can't seem to organize books on a shelf. Over the years, My Secret has shelved thousands and thousands, held each one in his hands. He thinks they might have seeped into him, through his skin, as much as the books he's read. At night and on his days off we spend hours talking about writing. He reads three or four books at a time. When he's not working at the bookstore he goes to other bookstores around the city and browses until closing time. Holding more volumes in his hands, filling himself up with words. book-sellers books francesca-lia-block the-thorn-necklace words writing Francesca Lia Block
a5b1b38 Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified one with the upper classes. In Montana, however, it didn't have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass. grammar montana rules-of-english-language writing Robert M. Pirsig
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. on-writing writing Diana Gabaldon
08593f3 How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt? What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them? writing Ray Bradbury
c6843d8 His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people? writing Alexander McCall Smith
1ae5db9 [Y]ou cannot mention everything in its proper place, you must choose, between the things not worth mentioning and those and those even less so. storytelling writing Samuel Beckett
1836504 That economics has a considerable conceptual apparatus with an appropriate terminology can not be a serious ground for complaint. Economic phenomena, ideas, instruments of analysis exist. They require names. Education in economics is, in considerable measure, an introduction to this terminology and to the ideas that it denotes. Anyone who has difficulties with the ideas should complete his education or, following an exceedingly well-beaten path, leave the subject alone. It is sometimes said that the economist has a special obligation to make himself understood because his subject is of such great and popular importance. By this rule the nuclear physicist would have to speak in monosyllables. writing John Kenneth Galbraith
6857729 There's a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will make the scene immediately three-dimensional. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
5889cab If the historian will submit himself to his material instead of trying to impose himself on his material, then the material will ultimately speak to him and supply the answers. writers writing Barbara W. Tuchman
c89c09e [T]hey are trying to find the right word, to choose, finally, the one that is most exact, most incisive. It's a process of sifting, which is exhausting and, at times, exasperating. Writers can't avoid it. The heart of the craft lies there. writing Jhumpa Lahiri
3b707a4 I lost my voice, but I had words. words writer writing Roxane Gay
5517c17 "Ayon kay Georges Simenon, ang dahilan daw ng pagsusulat n'ya ay "to exorcise the demon in me." Totoo yon para sa karamihan ng mga manunulat. Ang pagpuksa sa mga personal na demonyo ang nagsilbing makina sa likod ng mga di na mabilang na sanaysay, kwento, at tula. Ang manunulat ay biktima ng isang sumpa na para sa karaniwang tao ay ligo lang ang katapat." pagsusulat writing Bob Ong
e9fa27b Often in literary criticism, writers are told that a character isn't likable, as if a character's likability is directly proportional to the quality of a novel's writing. likeability writing Roxane Gay
3d8a434 And if minor characters show an inclination to become major characters ... you at least give them a shot at it, because ... just as in the real world it may take you many years to find out that the stranger you talked to once for half an hour in the railroad station may have done more to point you to where your true homeland lies than your priest or your best friend or even your psychiatrist. writing Anne Lamott
e92ed31 When I was a boy, Ray Bradbury picked stories from his books of short stories he thought younger readers might like and published them as R Is for Rocket and S Is for Space. Now I was doing the same sort of thing, and I asked Ray if he'd mind if I called this book M Is for Magic. (He didn't.) M is for magic. All the letters are, if you put them together properly. You can make magic with them, and dreams, and, I hope, even a few surprises... ray-bradbury stories writing Neil Gaiman
ee81e1a "I think "taste" is a social concept and not an artistic one. I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves." taste writing John Updike
76e3508 "He had entered another imaginative world, one connected to the beginning of his life as a writer, to the Napoleonic world that had been a lifelong metaphor for the power of art, for the empire of his own creation He began to dictate notes for a new novel, "fragments of the book he imagines himself to be writing." As if he were now writing a novel of which his own altered consciousness was the dramatic center, he dictated a vision of himself as Napoleon and his own family as the Imperial Bonapartes....William and Alice he grasped with his regent hand, addressing his 'dear and most esteemed brother and sister.' To them, to whom he had granted countries, he now gave the responsibility of supervising the detailed plans he had created for 'the decoration of certain apartments, here of the Louvre and Tuileries, which you will find addressed in detail to artists and workment who take them in hand.' He was himself the 'imperial eagle.' Taking down the dictation, Theodora [his secretary] felt it to be almost more than she could bear. 'It is a heart-breaking thing to do, though, there is the extraordinary fact that his mind retain the power to frame perfectly characteristic sentences." creativity death delirium hallucination imagination language novel-writing novelists sentence-structure syntax writing Fred Kaplan
55f4291 But books don't happen by accident. writing Scott Westerfeld
d2791f1 Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull no one would read them. kidslit manners writing L.M. Montgomery
bf34f12 Remember that you own what happened to you. life ownership writing Anne Lamott
2d1ed3d "Tell me something wonderful," he said to Dane. "Tell me that we are going to die dreamfully and loved in our sleep." "You're always writing one of your plays on the phone," said Dane. "I said, something wonderful. Say something about springtime." "It is sloppy and wet. It is a beast from the sea." "Ah," said Harry." dreams like-life lorrie-moore love loved plays reality sloppy springtime wet writing Lorrie Moore
b80cceb You'll be amazed how much you have in common with Edith Wharton (who struggled to feel worthy of success), Louisa May Alcott (who badly needed money), Madaleine L'Engle (who could have papered an entire house with her rejection letters) and other writers... impostor-syndrome women-writers writing Nava Atlas
b9f5fd4 "Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and "fall into a vortex" as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her "scribbling suit" consisted of a black woollen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally, to ask, with interest, "Does genius burn, Jo?" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on; in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew; and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew; and not until the red bow was seen gayly erect upon the gifted brow, did any one dare address Jo." creative-process writing writing-life writing-process Louisa May Alcott
b1e65ec Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship. literature reading words writing Anne Lamott
2cbe5a9 "If Laura was so prolific with poems, and in truth she was, then what was the problem with Megan's request? Couldn't Laura, with a little doing, keep stringing together line after line of words and construct, in time, a novel? It seemed logical, but there was the matter of finding an idea and sustaining it. Only fire could do that. The fire of rebellion. Mario Vargas Llosa had not used the term "fire" exactly, but rather had discussed the presence of "seditious roots" that could "dynamite the world" the writer inhabited. He claimed that writing stories was an exercise in freedom and quarreling--out-and-out rebellion, whether or not the writer was conscious of it. And this rebellion, Vargas Llosa reminded his readers, was why the Spanish Inquisition had strictly censored works of fiction, prohibiting them for three hundred years in the American colonies." mario-vargas-llosa novel-writing writer writing writing-a-novel L.L. Barkat
748ad10 "I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet," scoffed Marilla. "You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put to your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse." marilla-cuthbert reading writing L. M. Montgomery
f9f7e96 Sometimes it's beautiful and we fall in love with all that story. Even after a thousand pages we don't want to leave the world the writer has made for us, or the make-believe people who live there. You wouldn't leave after two thousand pages, if there were two thousand. The Rings trilogy of J.R.R.Tolkien is a perfect example of this. A thousand pages of hobbits hasn't been enough for three generations of post-World War II fantasy fans; even when you add in that clumsy, galumphing dirigible of an epilogue, The Silmarillion, it hasn't been enough. Hence Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Robert Jordan, the questing rabbits of Watership Down, and half a hundred others. The writers of these books are creating the hobbits they still love and pine for; they are trying to bring Frodo and Sam back from the Grey Havens because Tolkien is no longer around to do it for them. hobbits lotr tolkien writing Stephen King
63af7ee "How to preside over your own internal disorder? Finding the "I" that can represent the pack of you is the first challenge of the memoirist." writing writing-process Tracy Kidder
f2a5445 The letters released something, maybe a sense that he was not alone, that the world was a place where travelers in language could know the same things. solitude writing Don DeLillo
07ffb55 "There is no more subversive act than the act of writing from a woman's experience of life using a woman's judgment. "Prospects for Women in Writing" 1986" writing Ursula K. Le Guin
fd7bb52 "It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment. Our American heirs may find it incredible, as most foreigners do right now, that a nation would want to enforce as a law something which sounds more like a dream, which reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." How could a nation with such a law raise its children in an atmosphere of decency? It couldn't--it can't. So the law will surely be repealed soon for the sake of children." constitution first-amendment free-speech freedom-of-the-press literary-freedom literature writers writing Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
680e0aa Though he had spoken of the subject many times, in the silence of his room he added the powerful kind of phrasing that would not have occurred to him as he spoke, because it's origins were in the collaboration of hand and pen. writing Mark Helprin
096141b Just as an effective advertisement or page layout includes a lot of white space, a powerful scene requires immense restraint. Show things as simply as possible. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
0f74c22 Jamie's viewpoint is expressed almost entirely in metaphor: If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle. He's using physical language, but he isn't talking about the physical details of the situation. Claire alludes to her emotion and shows it by her actions, but Jamie is thinking directly in pure emotions. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
8c22690 For a different woman, a different relationship, a different situation, gentleness might have been the proper, the only approach--but not for this woman, in these circumstances. The only thing that will cleanse Claire (and reassure her: look at what she says at the end of it. She feels safe again, having felt the power and violence in him) is violence. And--the most important point here--Jamie pays attention to what she wants, rather than proceeding with his own notion of how it should be, even though it's a sensible notion and the one most people would have. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
56855cb This is why you use imagery when writing about sex; it's a means both of evoking immediacy and of distilling emotion. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
09579d8 It is widely rumored, and also true, that I wrote my first novel in a closet. writing Barbara Kingsolver
e157cfc [...] the day when male writers can speak for women is speeding by. Fast. writer writing Julie Phillips
0146c01 I had no way to stop . I did not write Fahrenheit 451, it wrote me. ray-bradbury writing Ray Bradbury
8889ee9 So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all. writing Ray Bradbury
58fa832 I claim no victory. But there was blood on my gloves when I hung them up. When was the last time you did a story like that, out of pure indignation? writing Ray Bradbury
ae667ee Pointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
bfa4fbf Dialogue doesn't take place in a vacuum. Dialogue is contradictory, in that it can either speed up or slow down a passage. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
0b30277 One of the general patterns of good (i.e., striking and memorable) writing is the effect of repetition. If you use a certain element--a plot device, an image, a noticeable phrase--once, readers may or may not notice it consciously, but it doesn't disturb the flow of their reading. If you use that element twice, they won't notice it consciously--but they will notice it subconsciously, and it will add to the resonance of the writing or to their sense of depth and involvement (and if it's a plot device, it will heighten the dramatic tension). But if you use that element three times, everybody will notice it the third time you do it. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
9e6db0a Don't let characters talk pointlessly--they only talk if there's something to say. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
cba8fab Almost everybody understands that you have to have something at stake for a story to be good. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
d010541 "Okay. This has to be a credible threat. Ergo, we have to have seen (and heard about) the real damage Randall has done to Jamie thus far; we have to be in no doubt whatever that he'd do real damage to Claire. We can't just say, "Oh, he's such a nasty person, you wouldn't believe..." We have to believe, and therefore appreciate, just what Jamie is doing when he trades what's left of his life for Claire's." sex writing Diana Gabaldon
a5182dc 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. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
f0e9d04 Daniel C. Dennett, un filosofo della Tufts University che ne sa sia di neuroscienze che di informatica, sostiene che la coscienza stessa ha un aspetto essenzialmente narrativo, radicato nell'evoluzione biologica del cervello. Non ho la competenza per riassumere le argomentazioni di Dennett, ma vengo persuaso d'acchito dalle sue conclusioni - perlomeno se considerate come una narrazione esplicativa. Egli concepisce la coscienza essenzialmente come <>; concepisce il se come un come se, un <> - in breve, una fantastica e incessante narrazione. <>, afferma il professor Dennett - storie che rivediamo e rettifichiamo in continuazione e che in continuazione rivedono e rettificano noi stessi. A questo punto vi chiedo: il meditare su domande del genere ha mai reso chicchessia uno scrittore migliore? Non sarebbe piu saggio se un narratore meditasse sulla casistica dell'amore, sui particolari di un tramonto, o magari sulle vicissitudini della nave spaziale U.S.S. Enterprise? Forse si, forse no. Ma nel porci domande del genere, come nel creare di continuo situazioni ipotetiche, facciamo quello che ci viene naturale - che forse viene piu naturale ad alcune persone che ad altre. nonfiction writing John Barth
c393967 The manager of my line told me, You never put anything down except to be read. Every word ever written is written to be read and if some go unread that's only chance, failure, they're like grubs that die without changing. words writing China Miéville
6929140 People who can read and write expertly, as you can, are miracles and, in my opinion, entitle us to suspect we might be civilized after all. miracles reading writing Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
ec35828 As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
1197902 "Don't go overboard in avoiding "said." Basically, "said" is the default for dialogue, and a good thing, too; it's an invisible word that doesn't draw attention to itself." sex writing Diana Gabaldon
d54fefa You don't need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you've written, you should be able to point to any given element--be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point--and say why it's there. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
896d344 To some extent, emotions are universal and can be treated that way; no matter what the participants' orientation or preference, they have sex for the same reasons and can experience the same array of emotions in the process. But there are three important distinctions to be made: 1. The logistics of physiology 2. The basics of sexual attraction 3. Cultural impact on character and situation sex writing Diana Gabaldon
ef9ceb8 "Men have external genitalia, while women have internal genitalia. This simple difference makes a lot of difference in how they write about themselves--and how you might write about your characters. Male writers don't often address internal sensation in a character, because they don't experience it (and probably often don't realize consciously that it's there). This accounts for a lot of Really Terrible sex scenes written by men (if you look at the "Bad Sex-Scene Awards" in any given year, you'll see that the vast majority are done by male writers)." sex writing Diana Gabaldon
86334ba Too many words for one book--truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor. editor fiction truth writing David Benioff
b86e24e Write your own part. It's the only way I've ever gotten anywhere. It is much harder work, but sometimes you have to take destiny into your own hands. It is much harder work, but sometimes you have to take destiny into your own hands. It forces you to think about what your strengths really are, and once you find them, you can showcase them, and nobody can stop you. women writing writing-process Mindy Kaling
32e997e My between-books strategy was reading voraciously and on a whim. leisure writing Erik Larson
1534ba0 I was learning the craft of poetry, which really was an intensive version of what my mother had taught me all those years ago -- the craft of writing as the art of thinking. Poetry aims for an economy of truth -- loose and useless words were not separate from loose and useless thoughts. Poetry was not simply the transcription of notions -- beautiful writing rarely is. I wanted to learn to write, which was ultimately, still, as my mother had taught me, a confrontation with my own innocence, my own rationalizations. Poetry was the processing of my thoughts until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life. writing Ta-Nehisi Coates
05b336b He wrote very well in those days, as it happens, much better than he does now. He had absolute convictions, and style is nothing more than the absolute conviction of possessing a style. latin-american-authors style writing writing-quotes Ricardo Piglia
fead8f6 It's not what's happened or what's about to happen; what's important is the sense of emotional uncertainty between the characters and the delicacy of the mutual trust being established. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
0e97fa9 I love it for what it tells me about life. I love fiction, strangely enough, for how true it is, If it can tell me something I didn't already know, or maybe suspected but never framed quite that way, or never before had sock me so divinely in the solar plexus, that was a story worth a read. writing Barbara Kingsolver
501d71b All the noise in my brain. I clamp it to the page so it will be still. reader writing Barbara Kingsolver
b3fa4a3 You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large it's better to use sensual details rather than overtly sexual ones. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
f226234 We have a rich literature. But sometimes it's a literature too ready to be neutralized, to be incorporated into the ambient noise. This is why we need the writer in opposition, the novelist who writes against power, who writes against the corporation or the state or the whole apparatus of assimilation. We're all one beat away from becoming elevator music. novelists opposition revolution writers writing Don DeLillo
73d9084 If I can give one bit of advice to any drama major, high school theater kid, or inmate who is reading this in a prison library with dreams of being cast in he prison play, its this: write your own part. It is the only way I've gotten anywhere. It is much harder work, but sometimes you ave to take destiny into your own hands. inspiration writing Mindy Kaling
debc5e3 People wonder at the romantic lives of poets and artists, but they should rather wonder at their gift of expression. The occurrences which pass unnoticed in the life of the average man in the existence of a writer of talent are profoundly interesting. It is the man they happen to that makes their significance. authors experiences expression maugham poets w-somerset-maugham writer writing W. Somerset Maugham
f981cd5 Norman Mailer enhances the beauty of pugilism by elegantly exploring it. trouble vocabulary writing Davis Miller
cf0b922 "Payne sought clarification. "Vertical or horizontal?" "Horizontal, of course." "Sorry but I can't help you." "Will you pipe down for a minute? Naturally she was dead since I work at a cemetery. Her face struck a chord though. So, I rummaged around in the old Rory memory bank, and Emily is what rings a bell. Didn't we go to school with an Emily? Tenth or eleventh grade, if I recall it correctly." crime-fiction mystery romance suspense thriller writing Ed Lynskey
aa9dbdf "Tate explained that James was able to achieve this magic through the use of the first-person narrator. Tate said that the first person is the most difficult form because the writer is locked inside the head of the narrator and can't get out. He can't say "meanwhile, back at the ranch" as a transition to another subject because he is imprisoned forever inside the narrator. But so is the reader! And that is the strength of the first-person narrative. The reader does not see that the governess is the villainess because what the governess sees is all the reader ever sees." puzzle unreliable-narrator villain writing Robert M. Pirsig
1562f29 (Cyril and Alice talking about Maude Avery and her books) 'I occasionally get letters from students asking for help with their theses.' 'And do you offer it?' 'No. It's all there in the books themselves. There's nothing much I can add that would be of any use to anyone.' 'You're right,' said Alice. 'So why any of them feel the need to talk about their work in public or give interviews is beyond me. If you didn't say what you wanted to say in the pages themselves, then surely you should have done another draft.' (p. 271) interpretation-of-literature writing John Boyne
10441ec It is a curiosity of writing about angels that, very often, one turns out to be writing about men. writing Donald Barthelme
cf95bc3 For a few weeks you got up at six to compose short stories at the kitchen table with while Amanda slept in the other room. Then your night life started getting more interesting and complicated, and climbing out of bed became harder and harder. You were gathering experience for a novel. You went to parties with writers, cultivated a writerly persona. You wanted to be Dylan Thomas without the paunch. F. Scott Fitzgerald without the crack-up. You wanted to skip over the dull grind of actual creation. writing Jay McInerney
fe59cec "You have always wanted to be a writer. Getting the job at the magazine was only your first step toward literacy celebrity. You used to write what you believed to be urbane sketches infinitely superior to those appearing in the magazine every week. You sent them up to Fiction; they came back with polite notes. "Not quite right for us now, but thanks for letting us see this." You would try to interpret the notes: what about the word now-do they mean that you should submit this again, later? It wasn't the notes so much as the effort of writing that discouraged you." writing Jay McInerney
900c170 Writing, which was both painful and palliative for me, turned out to be my own way of giving blood in a crisis. I can only hope this unit of words will have a longer shelf life than the forty-two days of a unit of blood, as this critical time blends seamlessly into the next one. timelessness writing Barbara Kingsolver
bb8e3a5 And I thought about women. All these books, and how long had it taken for women to write their share, and why were their still so few women poets and novelists, and even fewer who were considered to be important? writing Jeanette Winterson
2e6f0c0 Julian me habia dicho alguna vez que un relato es una carta que el autor se escribe a si mismo para contarse cosas que de otro modo no podria averiguar. Hacia tiempo que Julian se preguntaba si habia perdido la razon. ?Sabe el loco que esta loco? writing Carlos Ruiz Zafón
7d3beb1 "Before he wrote about them," said Quilty, pretending to read the guidebook out loud, "Hemingway shot his characters. It was considered an unusual but not unheard-of creative method. Still, even within literary circles, it is not that widely discussed." writing Lorrie Moore
bb87889 Critics always praise precision in writing, and some great writers (Joyce, Beckett, Gustave Flaubert) are masters of clarity--but one of the great (and seldom mentioned) resources of fiction is vagueness. writing Edmund White
a107ad8 She liked the way the words sounded. She imagined them floating above her in a comic-strip bubble words writing Kate DiCamillo
0612e96 Poetry aims for an economy of truth--loose and useless words must be discarded, and I found that these loose and useless words were not separate from loose and useless thoughts. Poetry was not simply the transcription of notions--beautiful writing rarely is. I wanted to learn to write, which was ultimately, still, as my mother had taught me, a confrontation with my own innocence, my own rationalizations. Poetry was the processing of my thoughts until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life. writing Ta-Nehisi Coates
e1b2889 "But now, after the news of Barthelme's death, this simple fact of or , which I had begun to recognize in a small way already, now became the single most important supplemental piece of information I felt I could know about a writer: more important than his age when he wrote a particular work, or his nationality, his sex (forgive the pronoun), political leanings, even whether he did or did not have, in someone's opinion, any talent. -- just tell me that. The intellectual surface we offer to the dead has undergone a subtle change of texture and chemistry; a thousand particulars of delight and fellow-feeling and forbearance begin reformulating themselves the moment they cross the bar. The living are always potentially thinking about and doing just what we are doing: being pulled through a touchless car wash, watching a pony chew a carrot, noticing that orange scaffolding has gone up around some prominent church. The conclusions they draw we know to be conclusions drawn from how things are now. Indeed, for me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo. The dead can be helpful, needless to say, but we can only guess sloppily about how they would react to this emergent particle of time, which is all the time we have. And when we do guess, we are unfair to them. Even when, as with Barthelme, the dead have died unexpectedly and relatively young, we give them their moment of solemnity and then quickly begin patronizing them biographically, talking about how they "delighted in" x or "poked fun at" y -- phrases that by their very singsong cuteness betray how alien and childlike the shades now are to us. Posthumously their motives become ludicrously simple, their delights primitive and unvarying: all their emotions wear stage makeup, and we almost never flip their books across the room out of impatience with something they've said. We can't really understand them anymore. Readers of the living are always, whether they know it or not, to some degree seeing the work through the living writer's own eyes; feeling for him when he flubs, folding into their reactions to his early work constant subauditional speculations as to whether the writer himself would at this moment wince or nod with approval at some passage in it. But the dead can't suffer embarrassment by some admission or mistake they have made. We sense this imperviousness and adjust our sympathies accordingly. Yet in other ways the dead gain by death. The level of autobiographical fidelity in their work is somehow less important, or, rather, extreme fidelity does not seem to harm, as it does with the living, our appreciation for the work. The living are "just" writing about their own lives; the dead are writing about their irretrievable lives, wow wow wow. Egotism, monomania, the delusional traits of Blake or Smart or that guy who painted the electrically schizophrenic cats are all engaging qualities in the dead." writing Nicholson Baker
5b584ca A related point: The job of the imagination, in making a story from experience, may be not to gussy the story up but to tone it down. The fact is, the world is unbelievably strange and human behavior is frequently so weird that no kind of narrative except farce or satire can handle it. The function of the storyteller's imagination sometimes is simply to make it more plausible. fiction life storytelling writing Ursula K. Le Guin
a78cdca A friend of mine who is working on a memoir says, I hate the idea of writing as some kind of catharsis, because it seems like that can't possibly produce a good book. You cannot hope to console yourself for your grief by writing, warns Natalia Ginzburg. Turn then to Isak Dinesen, who believed that you could make any sorrow bearable by putting into into a story or telling a story about it. grief loss sorrow writing Sigrid Nunez
f676e7b Literary friendship is impossible, it seems; at least, it is impossible for me. Indeed, all male friendships outside of work sometimes seem to be impossible: you look at each other at the restaurant at some point in the conversation and you know that each of you is thinking, man, this is futile, why are we here, we're wasting our time, we have nothing to say, we're not involved in some project together that we can bitch about, we can't flirt, we feel like dummies discussing movies or books, we aren't in some moral bind with a woman that we need to confess, we've each said the other is a genius several times already, and the whole thing is depressing and the tone is false and we might as well go home to our wives and children and rent buddy movies like or or masculinity writing Nicholson Baker
585f67f The thing about life is that life is an infinite subject matter. At any one moment you can say only what' before your mind just then. You have some control over what comes before your mind - you can influence the influx by reading, or by looking through your old notes, or by going to movies, or by talking to people, and you can choose what room of the house or what corner of the yard to sit in, and you can choose to write before or after you've masturbated - this is crucial - and you can choose to tell the truth or not to. And the difficult is that sometimes it's hard to tell the truth because you think that the truth is too personal, or too boring, to tell. Or both. And sometimes it's hard to tell the truth because the truth is hard to see, because it exists in a misty, gray non-space between two strongly charged falsehoods that sound true but aren't. writing Nicholson Baker
a6180e7 If there's true emotional content in a situation between characters, all you do is reveal it. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
758c824 "Wait," Charlotte said. "I'd like to say something, if I may, Papa." He nodded, and Charlotte stood. Her siblings were still looking very grave. She hoped they were in the proper frame of mind to hear what she had to say, especially Branwell. "I have been thinking a great deal about ... My stories." She nodded significantly to them, willing them to understand that she was not talking about writing so much as about crossing over. "Papa was very wise when he called my writing a childish habit, and I think he understands that, for me, its a dangerous one as well." The small square of paper that had caused such consternation lay in front of her on the table. Now she took it up and held it out, looking at each if her siblings in turn. "Emily. Anne. Branwell." She ripped the paper in half. Emily gasped. " I am renouncing my invented worlds and all who live there. If any of you are in the grip if a similar childish habit"- she raised an eyebrow at her brother - "I challenge you to do the same." challenge charlotte-bronte childish stories writing Lena Coakley
7c7190a Watch a good movie sometime without reference to what's happening but only with attention to how it was photographed; you'll see the change of focus--zoom in, pan out, close-up on face, fade to black, open from above--easily. You want to do that in what you write; it's one of the things that keep people's eyes on the page, though they're almost never conscious of it. sex writing Diana Gabaldon
13ba21a "You can write great books," the great man continued. "Or you can have kids. It's up to you." [...] Writing was a practice. The more you wrote, the better a writer you became, and the more books you produced. Excellence plus productivity, that was the formula for sustained success, and time was the coefficient of both. Children, the great man said, were notorious thieves of time. [...] Writers need to be irresponsible, ultimately, to everything but the writing, free of commitments to everything but the daily word count. Children, by contrast, needed stability, consistency, routine, and above all, commitment. In short, he was saying, children are the opposite of writing." parenting writing writing-life Michael Chabon
cecb080 Rather than write about what you know, you told us, write about what you Assume that you know very little and that you'll never know much until you learn how to see. knowledge observation seeing writing Sigrid Nunez
bca3173 Anthropomorphism, I've decided, is inescapable, and though I might try to hide it I no longer fight it. dogs grieving love suicide writing Sigrid Nunez
2000336 There was a shop on Lexingon that advertised passport pictures. I like to go sometimes. I keep them in a little album. Mostly they're of me, except for one, which ia of Isaac, aged five, and another of my cousin, the locksmith. He was an amateur photographer and one day he showed me how to make a pinhole camera. This was the spring of 1947. I stood in the back of his tiny shop watching him fix the photographic paper inside the box. He told me to sit, and shone a lamp on my face. Then he removed the cover over the pinhole. I sat so still I was hardly breathing. When it was finished we went into the darkroom and dropped it in the developing pan. We waited. Nothing. Where I should have been there was only scratchy grayness. My cousin insisted we do it again, so we did it again, and again, nothing. Three times he tried to take a picture of me with the pinhole camera, and three times I failed to appear. My cousin couldn't understand it. He cursed the man who sold him the paper, thinking he'd been given a bad batch. But I knew he hadn't. I knew that the way others had lost a leg or an arm, I'd lost whatever the thing is that makes people indelible. I told my cousin to sit in the chair. He was reluctant, but finally he agreed. I took a photograph of him, and as we watched the paper in the developing pan his face appeared. He laughed. And I laughed, too. It was I who'd taken the picture, and if it was proof of his existence, it was also proof of my own. He let me keep it. Whenever I took it out of my wallet and looked at him, I knew I was really looking at me. writing Nicole Krauss
64ab1ec "Squashed behind The Cloud of Unknowing we discovered a pocket-size spiral notebook with a day-by-day account of the time Justin had stayed with her and her husband after Tommy's death. The writing was legible though it required effort (this was before she took her calligraphy course), but Justin was ecstatic and asked if he could have the little notebook. "This is my history," he said. Later, after he had deciphered every last word: "Boy, was I loved." personal writing Gail Godwin
3a69eda The problem of self-loathing isn't new. What's new is the idea that it's the people with the history of greatest injustice who have the greatest right to be heard, and that the time has come for the arts not just to make room for them but to be dominated by them. representation writers writing Sigrid Nunez
bc84620 As a naturally shy person, I loved the anonymity of writing before my career took off. I loved how my stories didn't care about my weight. When I started publishing that writing, I loved that, to my readers, what mattered were the words on the page. Through writing, I was, finally, able to gain respect for the content of my character. feminist writing writing-craft writing-life writing-quotes Roxane Gay
8973b98 A story that has nothing but action and plot is a pretty poor affair; and some great stories have neither. writing Ursula K. Le Guin
ea99b1f Writing, I am convinced, is the least appreciated of all the creative arts. Only a miniscule portion of the population engages in sculpting or painting or composing but everyone writes - whether it be letters, invitations, shopping lists...It is not far-fetched, therefore, for anyone with a smattering of self-esteem to believe that if he or she had the time, and the desire, an acceptable book or article could be produced. writing Og Mandino
4da3f95 There is no such thing as reproduction, only acts of production. children parenting writing Andrew Solomon
042b098 Many writers, good writers who ought to know better, focus so tightly on the structure demanded by a crime story that they lose track of the fact that they are writing a novel. Accusations of both sensationalism and trivialisation are, alas, often justified. fiction genre genre-fiction technique thriller writing Laurie R. King
0f886fe "I suppose you must feel some bitterness against the historians," Roger ventured. "All the writers who got it wrong--made him out to be a hero. I mean, you can't go anywhere in the Highlands without seeing the Bonnie Prince on toffee tins and souvenir tourist mugs." Claire shook her head, gazing off in the distance. The evening mist was growing heavier, the bushes beginning to drip again from the tips of their leaves. "Not the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they only have what the past chose to leave them behind--for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it's a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper." There was a faint rumble in the distance. The evening passenger train from London, Roger knew. You could hear the whistle from the manse on clear nights. "No, the fault lies with the artists," Claire went on. The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It's them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king." "Are they all liars, then?" Roger asked. Claire shrugged. In spite of the chilly air, she had taken off the jacket to her suit; the damp molded the cotton shirt to show the fineness of collarbone and shoulder blades. "Liars?" she asked. "Or sorcerers? Do they see the bones in the dust of the earth, see the essence of a thing that was, and clothe it in new flesh, so the plodding beast reemerges as a fabulous monster?" writing Diana Gabaldon
b3545ff Times change and discoveries are made that render earlier techniques and approaches less effective. Change is inevitable. To remain rigid when the whole world is changing and advancing is to invite misfortune. The AA program in particular is challenged with an opportunity of unprecedented magnitude. addiction addiction-cure addiction-treatment alcoholics-anonymous challenge change chris-prentiss opportunity reading writing Chris Prentiss
c48ad88 Art is about the individual, the individual commitment not tethered to reward. For the maker, and later the reader or the viewer or the listener, there is no obvious reward. There is only the thing-in-itself, because you want it, because you're drawn to it. It speaks to the part of us that is fully human, the part that belongs only to ourselves, not mechanized, socialized, pacified, integrated, but voice-to-voice, across time, singing a song pitched to the human ear, singing of destiny, of fear, of loss, of hope, of renewal, of change, of connection, of all the subtle and fragile relationships between men and women, their children, their country, and all the things not measured or understood by the census figures and the gross national product. humanity writing Jeanette Winterson
9bd51b2 I have kept this diary doggedly, day by day, because I believe a continuous record, no matter how full of trivialities, will always gradually reveal something of the subconscious mind behind it. I've never regretted keeping a diary yet. There are always a few nuggets of literary value under all that sand. gay-men writing Christopher Isherwood
db3018d Fiction is like wrestling with angels-you do not expect to win, but you do expect to come away from the experience changed. fiction reading writing Jane Yolen
6574ce4 After the third [San Miguel], I am likely to announce that all writing is fantasy anyway: that to set any event down in print is immediately to begin to lie about it, thank goodness; and that it's no less absurd and presumptuous to try on the skin of a bank teller than that of a Bigfoot or a dragon. authorship fantasy writing Peter S. Beagle
ed65e59 Sometimes writing is hard. You know what's not hard? Watching Netflix. That's easy. writing Beth Revis
b594118 Escribiria sobre gente y lugares que yo conociera, y haria que mis personajes hablaran un lenguaje cotidiano. Y dejaria que el sol se levantara y se pusiera de la forma normal y tranquila que hace normalmente, sin hacer muchas alharacas al respecto. Si tuviera que introducir un villano en mi historia, le daria una oportunidad (...) Supongo que hay algunos hombres malvados en el mundo, pero hay que andar un buen rato para encontrarlos. ana-la-de-tejas-verdes anne-of-green-gables anne-of-the-island villains writing writing-inspiration L.M. Montgomery
a333c63 Escribir es reescribir. Se escribe para uno mismo y se reescribe para los demas. writing Carlos Ruiz Zafón
aec6197 To her, writing is making stock and reading is sipping broth, but only the spoken word is the full roasted chicken. writing Yann Martel
74d0ed2 Escribio su nombre y contemplo como la tinta se secaba poco a poco. El placer de la pagina en blanco, que al principio siempre olia a misterio y a promesa, se desvanecio por ensalmo. Tan pronto como uno empezaba a colocar las primeras palabras comprobaba que en la escritura, como en la vida, la distancia entre intenciones y resultados iba pareja con la inocencia con que se acometian unas y se aceptaban los otros. escritura lettering writing Carlos Ruiz Zafón
d82f79c Escribir es un oficio que se aprende, pero que nadie puede ensenar. El dia que entienda usted lo que eso significa sera cuando empiece a aprender a ser escritor. writing Carlos Ruiz Zafón
caebd80 I needed a drink. I needed a lot of life insurance. I needed a vacation. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. hard-boiled inspirational writing Raymond Chandler
db1e43f Do you have the courage? Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes. [Author was quoting Jack Gilbert, which he reportedly had said to a student] writing Elizabeth Gilbert
d6fc0f0 "Cainan (sometimes the name is spelled Kainam) was the son of Arpachsad: "And the son grew, and his father taught him writing, and he went to seek for himself a place where he might seize for himself a city. And he found a writing, which former generations had carved on the rock, and he read what was thereon, and he transcribed it and sinned owing to it, for it contained the teaching of the Watchers in accordance with which they used to observe the omens of the sun, moon and stars in all the signs of heaven." Here, then, is the origin of the star worship of the Sabians traced all the way back to the mysterious Watchers--whoever they were, whatever they are--who settled in the Near East in antediluvian times, taught our ancestors forbidden knowledge, broke some fundamental commandment by mating with human women and, as a result, were remembered as being responsbile for the great global cataclysm of the Deluge." astronomy generations knowledge sabians teachings watchers writing Graham Hancock
6a3e392 "It's a note. Let me read it for you. 'Couldn't anyone else see that they were all slaves of Satan? I had to cleanse the world of their evil. I am the hand of God. Why else would security have let me into the building with an assault rifle in my suitcase? I am a divine instrument.'" Tommy paused and looked up. "That's all I have so far, but I'll guess I end it with an apology to my mom. What do you think?" evil humor writing Christopher Moore
e51738f When secrets are unspoken and unwritten they are lodged safely in the mind, but writing them down seems to let them loose and give them the power to spread like pollen on the air and enter into other minds. secrets writing P.D. James
6ae18d3 "I did Barbie's dream as a one-off thing, but I found it haunting me; I kept having an image in my head of Martin Tenbones getting killed in real New York. Still, that would've been the end of it...except, by a wild coincidence, a short time later I received a postcard from Jonathan Carroll. He wrote that he'd been following my graphic novel --which was being serialized in magazine at the time--and he was finding a number of very scary similarities between my story and his as yet unpublished novel, . He concluded, "We're like two radio sets tuned to the same goofy channel." I wrote back and said, "I think you're right. What's more, I abandoned a whole storyline after reading , but I keep thinking I ought to return to it." Jonathan then sent me a wonderful letter with this advice: "Go to it, man. Ezra Pound said that every story has already been written. The purpose of a good writer is to write it new. I would very much like to see a Gaiman approach to that kind of story." With that encouragement, I began creating ." interview jonathan-carroll neil-gaiman radio writing Hy Bender
3e13c0d C'est en ecrivant qu'on devient ecriveron writing Raymond Queneau
6b32db9 Art consist of a writer or painter's psychosis extirpated on the canvas of his choosing, a truism whether one is inspecting a Vincent Van Gogh masterpiece or deciphering the incomprehensible utterings and dissociated ramblings of one of the Philistines framed in the picaresque novel 'Confederacy of Dunces, written by American novelist John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969). essayist memoir-writing writers-on-writing writers-quotes writers-voice writing writing-philosophy writing-process writing-style Kilroy J. Oldster
d4a133c I wrote that book anyhow, because I needed to write it for my own intimate purposes - and also because I was curious to see if I could convey my emotional experiences adequately on paper. reason-for-writing reasons-for-writing why-i-write why-to-write why-we-write why-write writing writing-inspiration writing-motivation Elizabeth Gilbert
2fd11b2 fbm nWy kntu 'ktb .. twjWb lHdyth `n lktb , whdh m l ytHmWlh lrjl , l ytHmWlwn mr'@an tktb. nWh 'mrun l yuTq blnsb@ l~ lrjl , shqW `l~ ljmy` men writing الرجال الكتابة الكتب Marguerite Duras
86382a8 Most of my writing life, to be perfectly honest, is not freaky, old-timey, voodoo-style Big Magic. Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that's how it gets done. Most of it is not like fairy dust in the least. writing writing-life Elizabeth Gilbert
faf15f3 I simply vowed to the universe that I would write forever, regardless of the result. I promised that I would try to be brave about it, and grateful, and as uncomplaining as I could possibly be. I also promised that I would never ask writing to take care of me financially, but that I would always take care of it - meaning that I would always support us both, by any means necessary. I did not ask for any external rewards for my devotion; I just wanted to spend the rest of my life as near to writing as possible - forever close to that source of all my curiosity and contentment. writing Elizabeth Gilbert
996c7bd l ynbGy llns 'n yuTl`n `ushWqhnW `l~ m yD`n min ktub writing العشاق الكتابة Marguerite Duras
e32c503 Zapochnakh da pisha v obkr'zhenie, koeto tv'rde silno me tlaskashe k'm tselom'drie. Pisaneto togava beshe moralen akt. Pisaneto sega kato che li chesto e lisheno ot smis'l. Poniakoga os'znavam slednoto: che ako pisaneto ne oznachava domogvane do suetata i prekhodnostta kato s'vkupnost ot vsichki neshcha, to niama smis'l. Che ako ne oznachava nepremenno slivane na vsichki neshcha v edno-edinstveno, neokachestvimo po svoiata s'shchnost neshcho, pisaneto niama drug smis'l, osven samoizt'kvane. No nai-chesto niamam mnenie, vizhdam, che vsichki poleta sa otkriti, siakash ne s'shchestvuvat veche steni, siakash napisanoto ne znae veche k'de da se dene, za da se skrie, za da se os'shchestvi, za da se prochete, siakash izkonnata mu neblagopristoinost ne se zachita veche, no ne se zamisliam po-d'lboko nad tova. then writing Marguerite Duras
0cc3567 This is where we work, in the interstices of ignorance, the land of contradiction and silence, planning to convince you with the seemingly known, to resolve - or make usefully vivid - the contradiction, and to make the silence eloquent. understanding writing Julian Barnes
4c2c15d I'm fond of joking that when I get stuck in writing, I'll kill a character or blow something up (in the novel...usually). writing Beth Revis
8f0cf2e You've finally written it? That's great! She asked me if I'd read to her from it and I said no. Just a paragraph? No. A sentence? No. Half a sentence! One word? No. A letter? I said okay, that I would read the first letter of the novel. She smiled and closed her eyes and sort of burrowed into her bed like she was preparing herself for a delicious treat. I asked her if she was ready and she nodded, still smiling, eyes closed. I stood and cleared my throat and paused and then began to read. L. She sighed and lifted her chin to the ceiling, opened her eyes and told me it was beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, and true, the best thing I'd written yet. sharing sisters writing Miriam Toews
2488ff2 One of the many things I have always loved about writing, not to be confused with publishing, is that all you need is your imagination. It doesn't matter who you are, you can write. Your looks, especially, don't matter. imagination writing Roxane Gay
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