Quotes from Don Roff

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you'll end up with less of either.

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

It's my belief that people enter your life at exactly the right time.

Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible.

When writing, I uncage KAT: Keep Adding Tension. Even if I don't know where the story's going, petting the KAT keeps it purring.

Writing a first-draft battle scene is akin to real combat—chaos, confusion, and you must keep your cool as you fire word bullets downrange.

It's hard to land a devastating jab/cross/hook/uppercut combo to your reader's imagination when you're telegraphing your punches.

Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.

If you treat your characters like people, they'll reward you by being fully developed individuals.

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.

Fear and self-doubt are the deadly enemies of creativity. Don't invite either into your mind.

Audiences will admire your character's strength but connect with them through their weakness.

Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.

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

Successful writing is a slow, daily, meticulous form of mental illness.

You're never as good a writer as you think you are, and you're never as bad. Just keep reading and writing, writing, writing.

Keep being bold on the page, and in life, and people cannot ignore you forever.

Love it when a compelling new character kicks open your mental door, tracks mud across your brain, and props their feet up on your cerebrum.

I write fiction. It may have mystery, it may have horror, it may have fantasy, it may have love, but like life, it's all the same genre.

There is no right or wrong way to write a novel. Each journey is different for every individual work and for every writer. The first error is never to begin; the second is never to finish.

Always work with/surround yourself with people who help make you a better version of you. Kindly avoid those who don't.

Authors must spend months, years making fantasy believable in a single work while reality runs rampant and complete chaos elsewhere.

The best writers I've read possess oodles of self-doubt, yet claw their way up with each work and remain humble. Boastful ones, not so much.

You can be a writer who doesn't read everyday. But you're not fooling anyone. It shows, rather embarrassingly, in your work.