Quotes from Chris Baty

A novel rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise.

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.

There's an old folk saying that goes: whenever you delete a sentence from your NaNoWriMo novel, a NaNoWriMo angel loses its wings and plummets, screaming, to the ground. Where it will likely require medical attention.

The biggest thing separating people from their artistic ambitions is not a lack of talent. It's the lack of a deadline . Give someone an enormous task, a supportive community, and a friendly-yet-firm due date, and miracles will happen.

Rereading parts of your novel while writing is like doubling back at rerunning parts of a marathon midrace.

Don't be offended if you encounter some good-natured ribbing; the idea of writing a novel in a month deserves to be laughed at.

Today's tangents will become tomorrow's arcs, and unforeseen connections will tie up your loose ends in a way that will make you want to slap your head and holler at your accidental brilliance.

The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy.

If you spend enough time with your characters, plot simply happens.

There's a book in you that only you can write.

If you have a million things to do, adding item number 1,000,001 is not such a big deal. When, on the other hand, you have nothing to do, getting out of bed and washing yourself before 2:00 P.M. feels like too much work to even contemplate.

Ray Bradbury said it best: "Your intuition knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way.

In the context of novel writing, this means you should lower the bar from "best-seller" to "would not make someone vomit." Exuberant imperfection encourages you to write uncritically, to experiment, to break your time-honored rules of writing just to see what happens. In a first draft, nothing is permanent, and everything is fixable. So stay loose and flexible, and keep your expectations very, very low.

fiction writing can be a blast when you set aside debilitating notions of perfection and just dive headlong into the creative process.

here's the thing: However attractive the idea of a writer's retreat may sound, having all day to poke around on a novel actually hampers productivity.

When your novel first peeks its head into the world, it will look pretty much like every newborn: blotchy, hairless, and utterly confused.

Having an end date for your quest through the noveling unknown is like bringing along a team of jetpack-wearing, entrepreneurial Sherpas.

The first law of exuberant imperfection is essentially this: The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy.

You are doing this because you are fantastic and brave and curious. And, yes, you are probably a little crazy. And this is a good thing.

My only explanation for our cheeky ambition is this: Being surrounded by pet-supply e-tailors worth more than IBM has a way of getting your sense of what's possible all out of whack. The old millennium was dying; a better one was on its way. We were in our mid-twenties, and we had no idea what we were doing. But we knew we loved books. And so we set out to write them.

Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child)," Mau's maxim went. "Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

A wearable, writing-enhancing object serves several important purposes. First, it helps you transition from the world of everyday living into the fictional realms you've created. In the former you are a normal person, working a normal job. In the latter, you are an all-powerful deity capable of laying waste to entire cities with a few taps of the keyboard.

Once you stumble across a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime idea for a book, it's hard to treat that story with the irreverent disregard needed to transform it from a great idea into a workable rough draft. When you give yourself just one month to flesh out your concept, you won't have time to feel overly protective of your ideas. And you will therefore stand a much better chance of bringing them to life.

The things that you appreciate as a reader are also the things you'll likely excel at as a writer.