It's not what you lift, it's where you carry it.

~ David Foster Wallace

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What is hell to a writer? Hell is being too busy to find the time to write or being unable to find the inspiration. Hell is suddenly finding the words but being away from your notebook or typewriter. Hell is when the verses slip away through your fingers and they never return again.

~ R.m. Engelhardt (Talon)

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The man is in his work,read it if you want to know about him.

~ R.m. Engelhardt (Talon)

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Pay attention, and use your imagination.

~ R.m. Engelhardt (Talon)

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I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences. Like vivid, rainbow metallic skin cells on the wings of a fragile butterfly, it is how you touch and reveal those inner parts of yourself, without damaging the psyche, that determines whether the beauty is experienced and expressed and shared with others or, in fact, becomes the death of the self and Soul and psyche. 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.

~ Sophia Rose

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Writing on dark themes is not as easy as one might think; you have to live the worst and the most terrifying nightmares, again and again, till they consume you entirely and become an inseparable part of you that you start dreading.

~ Heena Rathore P.

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There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.

~ Margaret Atwood

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Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.

~ Stephen King

Stephen King On Writing Writers

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

~ Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde On Writing Writers

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.

~ William Faulkner

William Faulkner On Writing Writers Writing Advice

1. Write like you’ll live forever — fear is a bad editor.2. Write like you’ll croak today — death is the best editor.3. Fooling others is fun. Fooling yourself is a lethal mistake.4. Pick one — fame or delight.5. The archer knows the target. The poet knows the wastebasket.6. Cunning and excess are your friends.7. TV and liquor are your enemies.8. Everything eternal happens in a spare room at 3 a.m.9. You’re done when the crows sing.

~ Ron Dakron

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Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

~ Edward Albee

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Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.

~ Dan Brown

Dan Brown Authors On Writing Writers

Fruition-Think of writing as a harvest.You till the ground.Plant.Water.Wait.Apple trees take years to bear fruit.Harvest.Clean.Process.Then you have apple pie.

~ Keelie Breanna

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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.

~ Stephen King

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Writing is such a lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up.

~ William Zinsser

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I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment.

~ William Zinsser

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The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.

~ William Zinsser

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The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everyone else, you have to want to write better than everyone else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen--editors, agents, and publishers--whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards are not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best.

~ William Zinsser

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Good writing is good writing, whatever form it takes and whatever we call it.

~ William Zinsser

William Zinsser On Writing On Writing Well Write Writer Writers Writing

...being rather unique is no more possible than being rather pregnant.

~ William Zinsser

William Zinsser On Writing On Writing Well Write Writer Writers Writes Writing Writing Advice

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit - a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.

~ William Zinsser

William Zinsser Adjectives On Writing On Writing Well Write Writer Writers Writing Writing Advice

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit - a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.

~ William Zinsser

William Zinsser Adjectives On Writing On Writing Well Write Writer Writers Writing Writing Advice

The truth is that most writers are needy.

~ Stephen King

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The pen to a writer is like a cigarette to a smoker, they need it to take the edge off.

~ Kellie Elmore

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Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.

~ Stephen King

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Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very, otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

~ C.s. Lewis

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For me, all writing -- storytelling and style -- gets back to the Bible, Twain and Hemingway, and not in that order.

~ Dennis R. Miller

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I'm not much of a believer in the so-called character study; I think that in the end, the story should always be the boss.

~ Stephen King

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I'm not much of a believer in the so-called character story; I think that in the end, the story should always be the boss.

~ Stephen King

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There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.

~ Stephen King

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I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven.

~ Stephen King

Stephen King Character Driven On Writing Stories Storytelling

Don’t quit. It’s very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it’s very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can’t get fired if you don’t write, and most of the time you don’t get rewarded if you do. But don’t quit.

~ Andre Dubus

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I write because I am a writer, not because I want to get anything out of it.

~ H. Raven Rose

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But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please.

~ William Zinsser

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Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don't like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I'm coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that wont the game.

~ William Zinsser

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It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't be careful enough.

~ William Zinsser

William Zinsser On Writing Write Writer Writes Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't been careful enough

~ William Zinsser

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There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.

~ Anne Lamott

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For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

~ Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott Author On Writing The Writing Process Write Writer Writing Writing Advice
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