Writing Advice Quotes

Write at the edges of the day.

~ Toni Morrison

Let your emotions guide your hand to the paper and watch how your sorrows can turn into beauty. For tears relieve your body but writing relieves your heart.

~ Raneem Kayyali

You need to take out the stuff that’s just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All meat, no filler!

~ Stephen King

Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.

~ Etty Hillesum

There's no rule for better writing. It's best to make your own rules, and see what works best for you.

~ Tarang Sinha

I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.

~ Ray Bradbury

... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.

~ Stephen King

A clever trick does not a concept make.

~ Larry Brooks

Remember: Bad timing equals great plot twists.

~ A.l. Mabry

Remember...Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don’t worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don’t make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why you’re here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don’t stop. Don’t question. Don’t quit. Don’t stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer’s block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up.

~ Bob Thurber

I was always taught to write the book you want to read. It's a philosophy I haven't wavered from since.

~ E.a. De Graaf

If you can't give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get the wheels turning, sound off. When your brakes jam, try going in reverse. If often works.

~ Henry Miller

Cutting words can cut your readers but if the intention is pure, the story will resonate loud and true.

~ Veronica Purcell

The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat; on the other hand, neither should the flesh be too thin, so that the bones show through. If the flesh is thick enough, and if the flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectable and the motion of the parts will reveal the articulation.

~ Mortimer J. Adler

I think if a writer is being honest they’d admit to a file full of a dozen or more stories that are all started to varying degrees. They’re like the kid who wants to be a firefighter and a police officer and an astronaut.

~ Dan Alatorre

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear>

~ Joan Didion

Writing is a solitary endeavor, being an author is not.

~ Karen A. Chase

In the book (Savvy Stories) you see some very real, very personal moments. The first week of Savvy’s life was the longest week of ours. We spent five days in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) worrying that our newborn daughter might die. It was touch and go for a while, and it was extremely difficult to write about. Chapter two gets a lot of people crying. But because we put that honesty out there, readers said “Okay, I can trust this guy.” Then they were better able to laugh with us, too.

~ Dan Alatorre

Let your eyes be the camera and your imagination be the set.

~ Raleigh Daniels

Whenever I write I always transport myself into the story to get a better glimpse to what I am capturing.

~ Raleigh Daniels

A love of writing is far greater than any word count.

~ Molly Looby

Don't let writers block push you around. Figure out what the problem is,whether it's with the ms or it's in your personal life, and face it head on. Don't stop writing. Just try really hard to work through it.

~ Darynda Jones

Writer's Block: making authors miserable since the Stone Age.

~ Max Hawthorne

Sometimes, I’ll craft a scene that’s so poignant; on the last keystroke I’ll raise my hands high overhead and scream “Yes!” at the top of my lungs. I have yet to experience an orgasm so powerful and fulfilling.

~ Max Hawthorne

You are an author! You will be a published author. Take pride in that, and present only your best work. Then, continue to improve, so your best gets even better.

~ Courage Knight

Writing is like knitting. Stitch after stitch, word by word, and before you know it you have a book ... or a jumper!

~ Luggs

Any advice for how to be a successful author?Yes. Don't be a woman. And be dead. And do both at the same time, if you can.

~ Michelle Franklin

When it comes to overcoming writing hurdles, getting sick is like suffering a review from a critic with an axe to grind; you can't let it get you down!

~ Max Hawthorne

Our lives make awesome stories, especially if you don't get too attached to the thread of your own narrative.

~ Michelle Tea

Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, Oh well, let it go, that's what copyeditors are for.

~ Stephen King

I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as a pianist runs his scales for ten years before he gives his concert: because when he gives that concert, he can't be thinking of his fingering or of his hands, he has to be thinking of his interpretation. He's thinking of what he's trying to communicate.

~ Katherine Anne Porter

Rhythm, repetition, making patterns--these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or a story, but they are craved as well because of our primordial need for reassurance, the sense of security we get from moving over the known. A mystery doesn't lose power in revisiting. Writing is not just to know, it is also to console. We need to be reminded that we are part of the obscure rhythm of birth and decade. It is the humming that matters.

~ Breyten Breytenbach

At its most basic we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style...but as we move along, you'd do well to remember that we are also talking about magic.

~ Stephen King

If you have nothing good to say about someone, write a book about them. - Carmen Fox, Life Motto

~ Carmen Fox

Tighten your prose so the story flows.

~ Anna Dobritt

The shock of recognition is a moment of excitement that shakes the soul. It may be hard to describe, but like other forms of love, you will know it when you feel it

~ Stephen Koch

Park your ego and listen to your readers. They can be your best friend or your worst enemy. But chances are you'll learn something from them.

~ Eliza Green

If you aren't willing to put your best work out there, write for yourself. Don't ever publish.

~ Eliza Green

Anything added can be subtracted, anything verbose can be simplified, anything missing can be found. Manuscripts are not books but negatives waiting for the fixer that turns them into prints.

~ Chloe Thurlow

When it comes to creating compelling fiction, the devil may be in the details, but it is your imagination that ultimately allows your work to spread its wings and take flight. And fly it must. Only by soaring above the clouds of doubt can one truly achieve a suspension of disbelief

~ Max Hawthorne