Quotes About Writing

'TIME's spell-check always admonishes me whenever I compose a sentence in the passive voice, a warning that is often ignored by me.

I taught elementary school and painted apartments for ten years. Now I write full-time and never have to change a thing I write. Every book comes to me in a flash of inspiration and takes me about two seconds to finish. The longer books, like the 'Time Warp Trio' novels, take a little longer to write - more like four seconds.

I was writing novels at eight. It was a science fiction epic, which went by the unimprovable title of 'Another Kind of Warrior.' I'd write it beginning to end, but when I'd finished it, I was another year older. The quality of writing and thought changed radically, so I'd start it again. I re-wrote that same book until I was 16.

I think to this day, 'Superman/Wonder Woman' is probably one of the trickiest things I've been working on. It's like being asked to write a 'Star Wars' movie or something like that. You don't know how you're going to handle it; you don't know if you can. You don't know if you should be the guy.

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.

I was never interested in writing novelizations. I'm still not. Especially not for 'Star Wars.'

Tolkien was, I believe, writing about his experience in the First and Second World Wars, where he would have spent a lot of time without any female contact. He was part of the fellowship of men who went to war, and I think, really, that's what he's writing about.

'Jurassic Park' and 'Star Wars' shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And 'Lord of the Rings' took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write.

I still tell people, 'I'm pretty sure I'm the only 'Star Wars' fan in history to ever break into Skywalker Ranch by writing a movie about breaking into Skywalker Ranch.'

Be wary of cutting and pasting research nuggets directly into your manuscript.

I am generally wary of the demand for 'likeability' in fiction, which I think is a bastardisation of the demand of identification - itself something of a suspect notion.

Things we write down are the fragments shored against our ruins. They outlast us, these scraps of words on paper. Like the detritus from the tsunami washing up on the other side of the ocean, writing is what can be salvaged.

I'm looking forward to getting back to my house and my Ugg boots and not washing sometimes, and getting back to writing.

Discover the times when you're most creative - mornings, nights, afternoons - and clear the time to work then. Many writers find the mornings are best, and the afternoons are only good for editorial corrections, or getting the washing done. Others can only work through the night, drunk.

Art is a conversation we are all invited to and are all worthy to participate in. Yes, great works can be intimidating, but no one else in the world has what you have—your voice, your eyes, your feeling and perspective. Other people have written great books, but no one else will ever write YOUR book. It's worth writing. That is the belief that carries me through.

Spend sunny afternoons writing. Take weekends in the country. Dream. Drink good wine, eat fabulous cheese and great bread. Make the kind of love that destroys the bed.

Rachel Hauck is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling author. She is a RITA and Christy Award finalist. The Wedding Dress was named Inspirational Novel of the Year by Romantic Times. Rachel lives in central Florida with her husband and two pets and writes from her ivory

Wow, Cross. I think you missed your calling. Screw demon hunting: you should clearly be writing Hallmark cards.

Charles Bukowski's Factotum

I write not for the sake of glory. Not for the sake of fame. Not of the sake of success. But for the sake of my soul.

Writing, it was like a heavenly balm, it was like the flowing out of deep waters, it was like the lifting of a load from the spirit; it brought with it a sense of relief, of assuagement.

I still like to write, but I mostly dabble for my own enjoyment. I discovered I'm very happy surrounded by books written by other people—and the readers who love them.

If I had grown up in a stable household with two well-adjusted and loving parents studied hard in school graduated with honors gone to college gotten a degree found a decent job met a wonderful girl fallen in love gotten married and lived happily ever after what in the hell would I have to write about?

You see, I'm not the hack. God is. And the Old Fart doesn't know how to write a conclusion that'll satisfy his audience. He leaves that to us, his lost children, doing his dirty work, inventing uplifting endings to erase his mistakes.