Quotes About Writing

One thing about Faulkner I like, apart from the simplicity, on the whole, of his life, was that he wrote on the bedroom walls. That seems to me the true mark of a writer.

There comes a time when you realize everything is a dream. And only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.

Si un libro es bueno, el escritor también ha de serlo.

I was in the house alone. That's usually the case because I'm writing and my wife is out in the real world doing something of great value and being with actual people. People who are not tied down to a keyboard, monitor and chair calling out to people who aren't in the house.

The exclamation point is a loud party-goer, demanding attention. Overdone, it can be annoying.

Know your death stakes! This is going to be crucial in order for you to write your novel from the middle.

But somebody told me once you have to write what you know." "Hooey! Write what you burn with, and then find out what you need to know to write it.

the Super Structure Principle may be stated as follows: The power of your story is directly proportional to the readers' experience of it, and the readers' experience is directly proportional to the soundness of the structure.

You don't always have to render the feelings of your characters, but you must know what they are in every scene. That way, the actions and dialogue will have an organic complexity that breathes life into fiction.

Coffitivity.com.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

Write what you love. That's really the most important thing—and believe it or not, the most important thing to making a living.

Write down the POV character in the scene, the objective, and a list of possible obstacles. Write a tentative outcome. Spend a couple of minutes making a list of unexpected things. Go wild. One of them will please you. Then you're ready to write.

Third: Act first, explain later. Stamp this axiom on your writer's brain. Or put it on a note and tape it where you can see it. This advice never fails.

In your first ten pages you can have three sentences of backstory, used all at once or spread out. In your second ten pages you can have three paragraphs of backstory, used all at once or spread out. But if you put backstory or exposition into dialogue, then you're free to use your own discretion. Just be sure the dialogue is truly what the characters would say and doesn't come off as a none-too-clever info dump.

Whenever I go to a hospital to visit someone, I must confess that half my mind is thinking, Hm, this would make a good detail in a scene….

Over the years I've heard some attempts at explanation, and I've jotted them down: • A combination of character, setting, page turning. • A distinctive style, like a Sergio Leone film. • It's who you are. • Personality on the page. • It's something written from your deepest truth. • Your expression as an artist. You'll

Most agents and editors, if they are speaking off the cuff, will admit that literary writing is defined as the kind that does not sell. The finalists for the National Book Award each year routinely sell between 2000 ? 5000 copies, and that's it.

Take a nice, long walk. Don't think about your book. Have a little notebook or recorder with you. You'll find the "boys in the basement" sending stuff up. When they do, write it down, and keep walking. (Note: I love Stephen King's metaphor of the "boys in the basement" from his book

Finish your novel, because you learn more that way than any other.

James Scott Bell

Agent Donald Maass, who has written a superb book called Writing the Breakout Novel, is of the opinion

Like every great writer before or since, Jonson understood that the best poets 'are both made and born'. That all great writing has to be hammered out and all great poets stand or fall by that 'second heat', their laboured revision.

Malone's commentary on Sonnet 93 was a defining moment in the history not only of Shakespeare studies but also of literary biography in general. What has emerged in our time as a dominant form of life writing can trace its lineage back to this extended footnote.