quotations about writing
I do everything they tell you not to. I go back and fix things as I go, otherwise I can't move forward. I don't write every day, I write in binges. I don't write drafts, what I write, fixed as I go, is pretty much what gets published. Everybody writes differently, and there are a lot of people who want everybody to write in the same way, people who have a lot invested in telling people to write a whole crappy first draft and then revise it, and so on. That absolutely doesn't work for me. I tell people there are things they can try, and things that might help, but there aren't any rules, except to do what works for you, what gets the story on the page.
JO WALTON
interview, RT Book Reviews
There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living -- cook books and detective stories.
REX STOUT
Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout
Every writer is an iron-monger that melts down old junk into new steel.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish.
NORA ROBERTS
interview, inReads, October 5, 2011
When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.
ISAAC ASIMOV
I, Asimov: A Memoir
My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Lucky the one who writes in a book of spiral-bound mornings
a future in ink, who writes hand unshaking
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Sweater"
So it is with all great writers: the beauty of their sentences is as unforeseeable as is that of a woman whom we have never seen; it is creative, because it is applied to an external object which they have thought of -- as opposed to thinking about themselves -- and to which they have not yet given expression.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.
CHRIS ABANI
interview, UTNE Reader, June 2010
Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus
Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
In my view, if you write every day you're a certified graphomaniac, you're OCD, you're addicted to the physical act and not the real, spiritual one.
ROSEMARY JENKINSON
"Writing is not about youth but about spark", Irish Times, March 27, 2017
I've come to believe that a huge part of getting better at writing is forcing yourself to see the things that have been in the corner of your eye all along. That means writing stories that include characters from other cultures and backgrounds--but also, being more open to other viewpoints in general. It also means interrogating all of your other lazy ideas and drilling into all of the "of courses" that you let yourself get away with.
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
"The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do To Make Your Writing More Awesome", Gizmodo, February 25, 2016
Fine writing is generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts and a labored style.
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
Things that you write are in some degree autobiographical, but the first thing you find out about autobiography is that it's the hardest thing in the world to write. It's hard because it's very difficult to be absolutely factual about yourself. So ... when you write, you may draw on facts from your own life, but if their not in harmony with your story, they're worse than useless. You just stumble over them.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986
I can't avoid writing. It's a sort of nervous tic I have developed since I gave up needlepoint.
CLARE BOOTHE LUCE
"Fast and Luce", Vanity Fair, March 1988
The text you write must prove to me that it desires me.
ROLAND BARTHES
The Pleasures of the Text
Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Path to Rome
Transitions are usually not that interesting. I use space breaks instead, and a lot of them. A space break makes a clean segue whereas some segues you try to write sound convenient, contrived. The white space sets off, underscores, the writing presented, and you have to be sure it deserves to be highlighted this way. If used honestly and not as a gimmick, these spaces can signify the way the mind really works, noting moments and assembling them in such a way that a kind of logic or pattern comes forward, until the accretion of moments forms a whole experience, observation, state of being. The connective tissue of a story is often the white space, which is not empty.
AMY HEMPEL
The Paris Review, summer 2003
Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It's as ludicrous as saying, "I aspire to pick up that piece of paper that fell on the floor." Either pick it up or don't. I don’t want to hear about how your diaper's full. Take it off or stop talking about it.
CHUCK WENDIG
The Kick-Ass Writer