Quotes About Writing

The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence. The writer must put no obstacles in the reader's way. Therefore I try avoid words that he must puzzle over, or that he cannot gloss from context; and when I make up names, I shun the use of diacritical marks that he must sound out, thus halting the flow; and in general, I try to keep the sentences metrically pleasing, so that they do not obtrude upon the reader's mind.

If I adhere to any fundamental principle in my writing, perhaps it is my belief that the function of fiction is essentially to amuse or entertain the reader. The mark of good writing, in my opinion, is that the reader is not aware that the story has been written; as he reads, the ideas and images flow into his mind as if he were living them. The utmost accolade a writer can receive is that the reader is incognizant of his presence.

Like any craft, writing is mastered by practice and patience, and if one has any "knack" for it at all, that very knack—paradoxically—can explicate everything under the sun but itself.

On occasion I read Raymond Chandler although I have certain reservations about this author. Chandler, while obviously a master of his craft, makes overuse of simile, to my annoyance.

The mark of good writing, in my opinion, is that the reader is not aware that the story has been written; as he reads, the ideas and images flow into his mind as if he were living them.

Poets in their chambers began to scribble notes.

Well, that's where I fall down. I can't imagine a bean. I could never make up a story to save my life.

Thus he always wrote using a pencil with a long, sharp but soft lead, so he couldn't here his words as they formed on the page.

The act of writing a novel is generally thought to be a solitary journey from that first awe-inspiring blank page to the end. However, the fact that most authors offer acknowledgments speaks to the presence of a team in the background, offering advice, support, information, a shoulder to cry on, or someone to share a laugh with.

We hear them continually on TV: hence they occur first when it is our turn to talk. In this regard, talk may be said to be the enemy of writing. If you observe yourself when on the point of writing that the word rising spontaneously to your mind is not the hard, clear words of a lover of plain speech, but this mush of counterfeits and cliches.

From this point of view, Rousseau knew that death is not the simple outside of life. Death by writing also inaugurates life. "I can certainly say that I never began to live, until I looked upon myself as a dead man" (Confessions, Book 6 [p. 236]).

Writing is nothing but the representation of speech; it is bizarre that one gives more care to the determining of the image than to the object.—J.-J. Rousseau, Fragment inédit d'un essai sur les langues

Preguntarme por qué no escribo inevitablemente desemboca en otra inquisición mucho más azorante: ¿por qué escribí? Al fin y al cabo, lo normal es leer

Only a mind steeped in true love can write irony. The others write satire.

The opening sentence alone contained thirty-six words—monstrous

James A. Michener

James A. Michener

The real poet has the last line in mind when he writes his first.

A really well-done first draft of a book bares your soul. The purpose of revision is so that everyone who reads the published version believes you were writing about theirs.

Harry Bernstein was a total failure when he wrote his bestselling memoir, The Invisible Wall. His prior forty (forty!) novels had been rejected by publishers. When his memoir came out, he was ninety-three years old. A quote from him: "If I had not lived until I was 90, I would not have been able to write this book, God knows what other potentials lurk in other people, if we could only keep them alive well into their 90s.

Barbara Cortland broke the world record. In 1983, she wrote 23 novels. She was 82 years old. Two novels a month that year. Altogether she wrote 723 published novels. The last she wrote at age 97. When she died a year later, there were 160 unpublished novels still waiting to be published. Did people like her work? Depending on what estimate you use, she sold between 600 million and 2 billion books. Most of her books were romance novels.

And it took him about 15 years of writing every day, writing thousands of poems and stories before he finally started making a living as a writer. He wrote his first novel at the age of 49 and it was financially successful. After 25 years of plugging away at it he was finally a successful writer.

The way you get good ideas is to do two things: 1) Read two hours a day. 2) Write ten ideas a day. By the end of a year, you will have read for almost one thousand hours and written down 3,600 ideas. One of these ideas will be a home run.

I wrote a blog post about how the book is different from the blog and why I chose to go the self-publishing route. I wrote guests posts for blogs like Techcrunch, which helped immensely and for which I'm very grateful. I used my social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Quora, and Pinterest.