Quotes About Writing

I look over my old books, happiest when I find a line it seems I could not have written.

I think the worst and most insidious procrastination for me is research. I will be looking for some bit of fact or figure to include in the novel, and before I know, I've wasted an entire morning delving into that subject matter without a word written.

The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it's time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.

Read. Read everything in the genre in which you want to write, but don't limit yourself. Read broadly. The best teacher of writing is a good book.

Irenaeus, wrote

Writing a long sentence is like watching a soccer player in slow motion as he kicks the ball across the field, as I leave a trail of dots and loops behind me.

Nature fits all her children with something to do,He who would write and can't write, can surely review.

Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review.

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

Well, if this is poetry, I'm certainly never going to write any myself.

If you can write each day, do it, and meet a quota. Minimum 350 words a day. A baboon can do 350 words a day. Don't be shown up by a baboon

Write like you're in love. Edit like you're in charge.

You keep writing because it's the only way to finish the book.

The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It's a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.

Don't give up. I don't think any other advice works. Writing is one of those things where you just have to do it. There will be far more people to discourage you than to encourage you. The time never comes to you, the inspiration doesn't come to you. You just sit down and do it." – James Lee Burke

Give yourself permission to be bad. Write first, polish later.

Dwight Swain, the great writing teacher, once said that the secret of excitement is to go deeper into your characters. Create more backstory, more secrets, more complexity, and you'll get excited again.

Structure is translation software for your imagination.

While there is some disagreement over the official length of a short story, a good rule of thumb is that it is between 1k and 7k words. Less than that and you get into the area of flash fiction. More than that and you move into the territory of the novelette (7k -20k) or the novella (20k-50k).

at least ten writing sessions.

Keep writing. Get to the end. Don't allow yourself to abandon the project. You must finish what you write. But what, you ask, if I have a chaotic mess at the end? Celebrate. This is the way it usually is, even for veteran novelists.

Good writers are good readers.

what led Twain to this conclusion: a conviction that great fiction, including his own, was necessarily autobiographical.

By the early twentieth century, autobiography was fast establishing itself as a major form of imaginative writing