Quotes About Writing

Of mediumship there are many grades, one of the simplest forms being the capacity to receive an impression or automatic writing, under peaceful conditions, in an ordinary state; but the whole subject is too large to be treated here.

I treated the first few books as a very long journalistic exercise. I thought of every chapter as an article that needed to be finished.

When I did stand-up at U.C.B., and I had a blog for a couple of years that started my writing career, 'Totally Confident and Completely Insecure,' it was the same kind of self-deprecating humor and stories about being out in L.A. and being treated like a loser at a hair salon because you are not famous.

I've learned over the years that big-name writers might be treated fairly by the media conglomerates that dominate publishing today. But the average author isn't.

Because I teach and write about depression and bipolar illness, I am often asked what is the most important factor in treating bipolar disorder. My answer is competence. Empathy is important, but competence is essential.

That's why I hate the outlines and treatments, because all you get are cliches. If you put things down on paper as your plan, it's very hard to get those ideas out of your head and do something better.

I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it.

No, I can't write treatments, I think there's a danger with treatments. That you... you write out your first excitement and enthusiasm in a prose treatment.

I started writing because I wanted to write scripts, but I wasn't very good at it. Then I started writing short stories, sort of as treatments for the film scripts, and I found I enjoyed writing short stories far more than I enjoyed writing film scripts. Then the short stories got longer and longer and suddenly, I had novels.

They say shock therapy is good for some things, but it didn't do me any good. It was a pretty primitive treatment at the time - once they gave it to you, you couldn't remember how long you'd been there. It knocked me back for a long time. I thought I'd never write again.

I became hooked on 'In Treatment,' which was so finely written and performed. Such a simple idea, and yet it delved into very complex territory with real grace and humanity.

I like writing dialog but don't think I'd be much good at a screenplay. I once had to write a treatment for a novel of mine - a condition of its being optioned by a movie producer - and I turned out something pretty lackluster. So my inclination would be to stay out of the way of an experienced screenwriter.

I spend my life studying that book, and every book I've written has in some sense been a book about the Bible, and that's what I mean by reclaiming its value and its essence for a world that no longer treats it literally and no longer reads it traditionally.

Then about 1951 I began writing again, painfully, a novel I called in the beginning A Life Sentence on Earth, but which developed into The Tree of Man.

I discovered writing children's books was a way to keep living in my imagination like a child. So I wrote a number of books before I started 'Magic Tree House.' Then, once I got that, I never looked back because I could be somewhere different in every single book.

If I wrote a memoir, it would be like 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.'

If I start tracing, I bet I will find a writer in my family tree.

Let me tell you, if I could write one-tenth as fast as some of my friends, I'd be made. I'd be it. But instead I happen to be, in the tree of life of writers, down at the bottom, with the hematodes.

Because of my poor writing posture, I started walking in the forest every day, and I found it a potent place to be creatively. It changed me in that it was a new way of doing my creative process, and I realised how much I liked being among tall trees.

Most books are surplus to the world's requirements, and I am going to sound very conceited here, but I am trying to write books that aren't just using up trees.

Will Shatner, Jonathan Frakes of Star Trek have already put novels out.

I'd be happy to do Star Trek again, if the writing was right.

The technobabble in 'Trek' just got completely out of control.

The dominant and most deep-dyed trait of the journalist is his timorousness. Where the novelist fearlessly plunges into the water of self-exposure, the journalist stands trembling on the shore in his beach robe.