Quotes About Writing

When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up.

Sometimes I'll spend an hour writing a tiny email. I work on it until I've created the illusion that I've dashed it off in three minutes. If I make a typo, I let it stand. Sometimes in fact I correct the typo without thinking, and then I back up and retype the typo so that it'll look more casual. I don't know why.

All you have to do is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing.

It's a crazy kind of schedule but five or six years ago, I had an idea for a book and wrote it rather quickly. All of a sudden I found that two books a year, spring and fall, was something I could reasonably do. I'm always chasing the next story.

I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I do not expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I could hope to write about anything else.

He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him.

To write a letter, and to have it posted; to get an answer, to read it and burn it; there we have correspondence stated in the simplest terms.

Perhaps there are people in this world who love their fountain pens with every fiber of their being—and that's very sad. If you're not in love with him, you can understand him.

Ambiguity is the essence of Irish writing, I think.

We're all the people in our books. A few people who read Eclipse in manuscript said that they felt almost embarrassed because it seemed to be so personal. I suppose, in a way, it should be gratifying but I find it puzzling. I certainly didn't set out to write about myself. Physically, I'm entirely different from Cleave. I don't have the same attitudes - but maybe I did.

My mother was afraid of the books I wrote, afraid of what she would discover if she read them.

Never kept a journal before. Fear of incrimination.

Among the few consolations of what has been called writer's block is the assurance that, so long as one has it, one is, indeed, a writer. Of course, the longer it goes the more it resembles, and risks being mistaken for, proctologist's block, real estate agent's block, and other obstructions ordinaire. — THOMAS LYNCH

At a desk, in front of a computer, my mind goes blank, but as soon as I take off (to the supermarket, to Australia), inspiration strikes. Journeys are the midwives of books. — ALAIN DE BOTTON

The only way you learn to write is by reading and studying the kind of thing you would like to write — and by writing.

I walk around in my human fog, lost in my own head, while he comes up with twenty-two words for seagull.

I wrote out of sheer stubbornness and panic.

Thoreau said that there are two kinds of writing: one reports the event; the other is the event itself. This is another version of show-don't-tell. One is at arm's length; the other is right in your face, in your heart, in your senses. When you read the event itself, you forget that you're reading — you're experiencing it. And we write and we rewrite to discover how to do this with every story.

I write about the emotional crises that we face in our lives. Readers tell me that they identify with my characters. They know them. They are them. I'm an everyday woman writing about everyday people facing not- so-everyday challenges. And believe me, I love readers like you to bits. I've built my career one reader at a time. I owe a dept of gratitude to you all!

What do I love most? Working with words. Words in a sentence are like pieces of a puzzle; you try out a whole bunch, then turn them this way and that until they fit into the whole. Creating flow is crucial. There's nothing like the moment when, after working and reworking a sentence, everything falls into place, and you know that it's right. What I do love least? Touring. It's grueling, time-consuming, and lonely.

Charlotte Evans was used to feeling grungy. As a freelancer, she traveled on a shoestring, getting stories other writers did not, precisely because she wasn't fussy about how she lived. In the last twelve months, she had survived dust while writing about elephant keepers in Kenya, ice while writing about the spirit bear of British Columbia, and flies while writing about a family of nomads in India.

returned to the typewriter, angrily erasing and correcting each mistake she'd made, desperately wishing she could as easily wipe out her mental image of the man in her carriage house.

Sound is so important to creative writing. Think of the sounds you hear that you include and the similes you use to describe what things sound like . 'As she walked up the alley, her polyester workout pants sounded like windshield wipers swishing back and forth.' Cadence, onomatopoeia, the poetry of language are all so important. Learn all that you can about how to bring sound into your work.

I sat down with paper and pen and just wrote, recklessly, without judgment, without spell-check. It was like going deliciously mad on the page! Where did these feelings come from? Who was feeling them? Who was writing such odd thoughts and images? Each time I surfaced I came back with a strange creature I treasured. Whether the world would equally treasure my captives wasn't important; they were mine and I welcomed them home like family.