Quotes About Craft

Being a professional writer is a lot like being a hooker. You'd better find out if you're any good at it before you start charging for it.

Photoshop. The dog tag could

Writing doesn't leave much time for hobbies, unless you consider that I began writing as a hobby and have made the hobby into a profession.

Everyone is desirous of his own pursuits, and loves To spend his time in his accustomed art.

The greatest gift anyone can give to a writer is time.

Isn't today a day to devote to craft? Isn't tomorrow? Isn't every day, routinely, until the end of time?

install me in any profession Save this damn'd profession of writing, where one needs one's brains all the time.

Money to a writer is time to write.

An actor's job is to do their job. It's great if it's successful and it's fantastic when it's a huge hit, but at the same time, you're there to do a job and make sure you do it well.

I think I've spent so much time playing characters that are so far away from me and learning how to technically build and how to technically put something on top of you.

You can't be a storyteller and a speechwriter at the same time.

I'm a very slow screenwriter. It takes time for me to write a screenplay. Also, I feel it's not my strength.

We brewers don't make beer, we just get all the ingredients together and the beer makes itself.

every writer needs two selves—the generative self and the editor self.

Every reporter who came up in legacy media can tell you about a come-to-Jesus moment when an editor put them up against a wall and tattooed a message deep into their skull: show respect for the fundamentals of the craft, or you would not soon be part of it.

You don't just write something and it's done. You don't just do it. You write parts and you rewrite and you have new ideas and you move stuff. I don't want to talk about the book.

The only wat to get better at writing is to write. And read.

Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer

When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

Common tools go on top. The commonest of all, the bread of writing, is vocabulary.

Grammar is not just a pain in the ass; it's the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking. Besides, all those simple sentences worked for Hemingway, didn't they? Even when he was drunk on his ass, he was a fucking genius.

And no matter how much I want to encourage the man or woman trying for the first time to write seriously, I can't lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.

Inspiration and confidence and conviction and craft and knowledge are not what make writing possible. It's exactly the other way around. Writing makes them possible.

Writers acquire their technique by spotting, savoring, and reverse-engineering examples of good prose.