I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.

~ Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates Freedom On Writing Pseudonym

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell Biases Democracy Essayist On Writing Political Politics Purpose Totalitarianism World War Ii

Don’t beat yourself up, son. I’m sure there is a culture on this spinning ball of dirt where you can be pretty. If not, do rock ‘n roll, or practice words. That shit’s pretty as well.

~ R.x. Bird

R.x. Bird Beauty Music On Writing Pretty Rock Rock And Roll Words Writing

Be a good reader first, if you wish to become a good writer.

~ Pawan Mishra

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Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets.

~ Julia Cameron

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Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite—getting something down.

~ Julia Cameron

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You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.

~ Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich On Writing Reading

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

~ Thomas Wolfe

Thomas Wolfe On Writing Reading

A book is not completed till it's read.

~ Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie On Writing Reading

A writer gets to live yet another life every time she creates a new story.

~ Pawan Mishra

Pawan Mishra Aspiring Writers Authors Books Creative People Creative Process Creative Writing Creativity Fiction Fundamentals Of Creative Writing Fundamentals Of Writing Literature On Writing Power Of Words Quotes On Writing Reading Short Story Stories Story Writing Storytelling Tips On Writing Write Writers Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Fiction Writing Style

Writing a story is like going on a date—you will spoil it if you aren't living in the moment.

~ Pawan Mishra

Pawan Mishra Aspiring Writers Authors Books Creative People Creative Process Creative Writing Creativity Fiction Focus On Writing Fundamentals Of Creative Writing Fundamentals Of Writing Literature On Writing Power Of Words Quotes On Writing Reading Short Story Stories Story Writing Storytelling Tips On Writing Write Writers Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Fiction Writing Style

Tell a story in lesser and simpler words.

~ Pawan Mishra

Pawan Mishra Aspiring Writers Authors Books Creative Writing Fiction Fundamentals Of Creative Writing Fundamentals Of Writing Literature On Writing Power Of Words Quotes On Writing Reading Short Story Stories Story Writing Storytelling Tips On Writing Write Writers Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Fiction Writing Style

Don’t break the rules when you haven’t fully figured them out yet.

~ Pawan Mishra

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Dreams are good at playing with your memory. They love leaving no trace behind and hate to show up once again in the morning.

~ Pawan Mishra

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The good writing ideas don’t have to be about political turmoil, mass killings, capitalism, racism, injustice, etc. Find that one idea that has deep roots in your heart.

~ Pawan Mishra

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Create a world in front of your readers where they can taste, smell, touch, hear, see, and move. Else they are likely going to move on to another book.

~ Pawan Mishra

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A writer can do without food for a few hours, but not without the sight of books.

~ Pawan Mishra

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Turn those deep feelings and obsessions of your heart into captivating pieces of literature.

~ Pawan Mishra

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Ideas either age like fine wine or rot like potatoes over time.

~ Pawan Mishra

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If you are a singer, you must sing. If you are a dancer, you must dance. If you are a writer, you must write. Don’t suffocate your heart.

~ Pawan Mishra

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As you become a better writer, the writing becomes more difficult. You toil harder to tell a story in a lesser number of words.

~ Pawan Mishra

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Don’t interrupt when your characters take a flight of their own.

~ Pawan Mishra

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Cliches are the viruses that infect your writing with diseases.

~ Pawan Mishra

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If you think there is no time to write now, there would never be.

~ Pawan Mishra

Pawan Mishra Aspiring Writers Authors Books Creative People Creative Process Creative Writing Creativity Fiction Fundamentals Of Creative Writing Fundamentals Of Writing Literature On Writing Power Of Words Quotes On Writing Reading Short Story Stories Story Writing Storytelling Tips On Writing Write Writers Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Fiction Writing Style

If certain aspect needs to be inconsistent, it must better be consistently inconsistent throughout the story.

~ Pawan Mishra

Pawan Mishra Aspiring Writers Authors Books Creative People Creative Process Creative Writing Creativity Fiction Fundamentals Of Creative Writing Fundamentals Of Writing Literature On Writing Power Of Words Quotes On Writing Reading Short Story Stories Story Writing Storytelling Tips On Writing Write Writers Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Fiction Writing Style

you come to understand that history might be, as Thomas Carlyle put it, “a distillation of rumor,” or, as Napoleon said, “a set of lies generally agreed upon

~ James Alexander Thom

James Alexander Thom Historical Fiction History On Writing

Am I making something worth while?I’m not sure.I write and I sing and I hear words from time to time about my life and choices making ways, into other lives, other hearts,but am I making something worth while?I’m not sure.There was a boy last night who I never spoke to because I was too drunk and still shy, but mostly lonely, and I couldn’t find anything lightly to say,so I simply walked awaybut still wondered what he did with his lifebecause he didn’t even speak to meor look at mebut still made me wonder who he wasand I walked away askingAm I making something worth while?I am not sure.I am a complicated person with a simple lifeand I am the reason for everything that ever happened to me.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

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I write fiction. It may have mystery, it may have horror, it may have fantasy, it may have love, but like life, it's all the same genre.

~ Don Roff

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I know, not everyone will like what I write, but writing is not about trying to please everybody.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

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Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half of a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess.

~ Howard Mittelmark

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Are you imperfect, romantically irrational, ridiculously fearless, and utterly illogical? You're my ideal reader, friend, partner. I'm your fan.

~ Brook Tesla

Brook Tesla Children Family Fan Fantasy Fiction On Writing Reader Readers Teens Writing Young Adult

Writing is about truth, whether it be fiction or a school essay. Don't give in and 'fake it till you make it.' Criticize what upsets you.

~ Bryant Loney

Bryant Loney Fiction On Writing Truth Writing Young Adult

It is not my job to explain the story or understand the story or reduce it to a phrase or offer it as being a story about any specific person, place, or thing. My job is to have been true enough to the world of my story that I was able to present it as a forceful and convincing drama. Every story is a kind of puzzle. Many have obvious solutions, and some have no solution at all. We write to present questions, sometimes complicated questions, not to offer easy or not-so-easy answers. Do not be misled by the limited vocabulary the American marketplace uses to describe the possibilities for story and drama. If we’re really writing we are exploring the unnamed emotional facets of the human heart. Not all emotions, not all states of mind have been named. Nor are all the names we have been given always accurate. The literary story is a story that deals with the complicated human heart with an honest tolerance for the ambiguity in which we live. No good guys, no bad guys, just guys: that is, people bearing up the crucible of their days and certainly not always—if ever—capable of articulating their condition.

~ Ron Carlson

Ron Carlson Fiction On Writing

And this is what being an artist means, being a poet? To sacrifice yourself for your art, sacrifice your heart for your art, because it’s only through something broken that something beautiful can grow.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

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Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

~ Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein Creativity Literature On Writing

Working with the morning pages, we begin to sort through the differences between our real feelings, which are often secret, and our official feelings, those on the record for public display.

~ Julia Cameron

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One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.

~ Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard Creativity On Writing On Writing A Book Writing Life

I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.

~ H. Raven Rose

H. Raven Rose Creativity On The Elusive In Writing On Writing Writer Quote

A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man can become, everything he's capable of. Novelists draw up the map of existence by discovering this or that human possibilit. But again, to exist mean: 'being-in-the-world.' Thus both the character and his world must be understood as possibilities.

~ Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera Literature Novel On Writing Possibilities

I'm not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I'm not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's Writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.

~ Stephen King

Stephen King Author Literature Novelist On Writing Scribe Stephen King Writer Writers Writing Writing Life
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