Writing Advice Quotes

Not everyone is fodder for books,' said Rosalind.

~ Jeanne Birdsall

You will do well not to write for money, not because you won't get rich doing it, but because writing fueled by that sort of motivation becomes dull and lifeless and mediocre.

~ Joyce Rachelle

When you're writing, don't forget to keep your favorite audience in mind--you.

~ Lori Lesko

Motivated authors sacrifice TV time, sleep, hobbies, and even family time.

~ Gudjon Bergmann

There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.

~ Gudjon Bergmann

Write a book, not the book.

~ Gudjon Bergmann

If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

The only way you'll find out if you have it in you is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some way inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you.

~ Cheryl Strayed

You can swap the message around, and whatever the particular norm is, or whatever the particular message is, when you put your pet-peeve message before story, odds are you are going to bore the shit out of your reader.

~ Larry Correia

Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.

~ Chuck Wendig

It's not pain. It's raw material.

~ Jo Bell

I’ve had situations when I’ve actually encouraged authors to self-publish because their book was poor. Now one would conclude that I’m asking them to self-publish because their book was poor and the self-publishing warehouse is where all the poor books belong. But no, it’s because “poor” is only my opinion, and I’m just one in millions of readers.

~ King Samuel Benson

They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams.

~ Haruki Murakami

I am grateful to all my readers, you inspired me to keep writing.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

~ Nancy Kress

For me, art that's alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

~ David Foster Wallace

Q: What do you think is magical about fiction?DFW: ... The first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way... There's another level... A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely... There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone--intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art.

~ David Foster Wallace

You’re allowed to manipulate the environment, but not the character.

~ Sean Platt

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.

~ Stephen King

The best kind of praise is intelligent praise.

~ Rachel Heffington

Aspiring authors, get this through your head. Cover art serves one purpose, and one purpose only, to get potential customers interested long enough to pick up the book to read the back cover blurb. In the internet age that means the thumb nail image needs to be interesting enough to click on. That’s what covers are for.

~ Larry Correia

...and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your work will smell of your poverty. It will be colored by your weakness and be as thin as your hunger. There are other trades which you can take up: make boots, not books.

~ Marquis De Sade

We’re at this really unique time, I think, in trans representation in popular culture where homelessness, depression, mental health issues, instability-in-general are still so very real and need to be talked about, but we’re aware that they’ve dominated “trans” stories for years and years. And we’re now finally at a place where we’re seeing some really positive representations of trans folks in pop culture, and there’s this new pressure -- at least, I feel it, within trans and trans-ally communities -- to only focus on the positive. Because we’re trying, in some sense, to overcompensate for the years and years of too much negativity. As a writer, you might feel a pressure to push the negative stuff away. But there are consequences for that too. Anyone who’s working with trans characters right now is going to have to reconcile that tension.

~ Mitch Kellaway

Always carry with you a pen and a notebook or a journal to write the thoughts that flashes in a moments.

~ Lailah Giftyakita

The only prophecy the artist can make with confidence is that he and his message will be misunderstood by a world that values all the wrong things.

~ Chloe Thurlow

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.

~ Amy Joy

Your story must told.Live a life legacy- written book or notes.This will be there for many generations to know your rich experiences and knowledge.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Make time to write every day. The writing muscle is like any other muscle; the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.

~ Judy Penz Sheluk

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.

~ George Orwell

You think you have no ‘talent’? Write anyway. lots of people with ‘talent’ don’t actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have ‘talent.

~ M. Kirin

If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I've seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence.'If you don't -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to this house this -blanking- minute, I'm going to -blank- your -blank- and nail it to the -blanking- door.'Two things happen when I read this junk: I get bored and I get angry. I didn't pick up your book to read garbage. If this is as clever as you can be, I don't want to read your prose. In life if you met someone who spoke like this, you'd want to flee. Then why put this stuff on the page?As near as I can determine, this abomination occurs because a writer is corrupted by the awful -blanking- dialog that movies inflict on us these days. It's also a sign of insecurity. The writer wonders if the dialog is strong enough and decides a lot of -blanking-blank- will do the trick.Someone might object that this kind of dialog is realistic in certain situations--intense scenes involving policemen or soldiers for example. I can only reply that in my research I spend considerable time with policemen and soldiers. Few of them curse any more than a normal person would. This garbage isn't realistic. It merely draws attention to itself and holds back the story. Use it sparingly.

~ David Morrell

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

~ Bonnie Friedman

...a deadline should not prevent you from writing, but writing will help prevent you from missing your deadline. Then write a word. Then remind yourself of that again. And then write another and hey, look at you! You’re spitting in that deadline’s eye.

~ Courtney Summers

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely. We can unlock our lives with a pencil tip.

~ Bonnie Friedman

Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.

~ Bonnie Friedman

We don’t read to observe the character from a distance. We read to become the character and experience the conflicts and rewards they are experiencing.

~ Darynda Jones

I don’t get writer's block because I don’t believe in it. I believe you sit in front of the computer and force your fingers to get something on the screen.

~ Janet Evanovich

Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.

~ Vladimir Nabokov

Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect.

~ Mark Twain

While the goal of a book is to create a positive emotional experience for the reader, the goal of the opening is to set the stage, to pull the reader in.

~ Darynda Jones