Quotes About Craft

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

Keeping house—picking up those messes one more time—is a service of worship to God as we craft a place of beauty and comfort for all who enter our sanctuary of His very presence.

Knitting helps get both sides of the brain going, has a calming effect, and helps students in problem solving.

I'm not a writer. I think I can write short stories and poetry, but film writing, brilliant film writing, is a talent - you can't just do it like that.

Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words.

The sad truth is, S—, most people are not writers. This has nothing to do with literacy—or intelligence, or general culture. There are people who can correct the grammar, spelling, diction, and style of a college English paper with the best of them—who are still not writers. Indeed, most of what gets published in books, magazines, and newspapers is not written by real writers—which is one reason why so much of it is so bad.

It's getting harder to hone your craft because of YouTube and the internet. You really need to get out to the clubs to hone your craft. A lot of people these days don't have the patience.

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

You spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!.

Being a writer is a more difficult job than people imagine.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

When you add up the minutes you spend actually making a movie - the amount of time you spend actually doing your thing in front of a camera - it just isn't that much. But it's everything.

That first year at Universal was a big blur and, naturally, I thought they were wasting me. I didn't realize at the time that I was learning my craft and acting more easily in front of the camera.

I think acting is an important profession, because acting can give you pleasure and can teach you at the same time, and that is a good thing.

I'm not one that just throws music out there to keep it coming, and all that. I believe in the craft, and the time it takes to really nurture something and put a lot of effort into the details.

It's important to focus on what we do best and master one craft at a time.

Most actors spend a lot of time training themselves to be an actor. And I kind of didn't do that. I just started doin' it in front of an audience and had to deliver.

Whether it is done quickly or slowly, however splendid the results, the process of writing fiction is inherently, inevitably, indistinguishable from wasting time.

Not only is acting more than a part-time job, it's more than a full-time job. It's a full-time obsession.

A lot of the time in animation is spent getting the story right - that's something you can't rush.

It's very slow for me to create humor. It takes me a long time to write a humor piece. It takes days.

Whether you're an unpublished novelist or a sixteen-time New York Times bestselling author, you can always improve your craft. You can always become a better writer.

If in this address I were to summon all the writers to whom I owe a few things or a great deal, their shadows would plunge us into darkness. They are innumerable. In addition to revealing the secrets of the storytelling craft, they obliged me to explore the bottomless depths of humanity, admire its heroic deeds and feel horror at its savagery.

Desvarío empobrecedor el de querer escribir novelas, el de querer explayar en quinientas páginas algo que se puede formular en una sola frase».