Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn't much of a theory, but it was all Ruth could truly commit herself to at the moment. It was time to retire that old lecture, and her penance was to endure the compliments of her former credo.

~ John Irving

John Irving Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Process

Writing is like painting a painting. Layer over layer over layer.

~ Kevin James Breaux

Kevin James Breaux Work Writing Writing Process

Never stop writing. Whether you’re writing a novel, screen play or just keeping a journal, it’s integral that you make writing a daily process. The proof of the commitment to your craft is just how much time you spend doing it, whether it’s for business or pleasure. Integrate your craft into your every day life, and you’ll be as good as gold.

~ Leigh Hershkovich

Leigh Hershkovich Success Writing Writing Process

The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.... Writing is seduction. Good talk is part of seduction.

~ Stephen King

Stephen King Writing Process

Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it.

~ Christy Hall

Christy Hall Writers On Writing Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Process

A lot of artists start out as failed poets, then move on to being failed short-story writers before they finally break through to the big time and become failed novelists.

~ Gary Reilly

Gary Reilly Writing Process

Inspiration do not come and cannot be found, it has to exist - somewhere, somehow. Do believe that what you are doing is the most important thing in this world, and do believe that your words can be magical. Because I know they can be and I know they are. If you feel that you are lost in your own mind, don’t think, just write. Sometimes we have to erase our thoughts and memories to gain enough strength to be able to write down our inner thoughts. If you don’t know what it is, if you think it’s ridiculous or silly, you’re definitely on the right way. Sometimes you will hate your words and sometimes you will love them. This is the fun part of greatness in which the other part definitely will be your devil. Remember; with greatness comes obstacles.

~ Liv-Christine Hoem

Liv-Christine Hoem Inspiration Writing Writing Process

Do not worry about what words to use. Worry about why this story needs to be told and the rest will take care of itself.

~ Moira Katson

Moira Katson Writing Writing Process

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

~ Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro Writing Writing Process

There's an old saying that great writing is simple but not easy, and so it is. The search for that one plain but inobvious [SIC] word that will do the work of five, the agony of untangling a complex idea that has become a mess of phrases in the writer's mind, the willingness to keep doing it over and over again until it is right--all of that plus some luck yields prose so clear that it seems a child could have written it.

~ William Souder

William Souder Brainstorming Creative Thinking Insight Understanding Oneself And Others Writing Process

The setting sun threatened to consume me—it could have, you know. It would have been a beautiful death with an honorable eulogy: slain by a magnificent slice of piercing orange energy. I simply turned and walked away; I would live another day.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Death By Sun Nature On Being A Rat Rural Living Sun Writing Writing Process

The novella will be called, I think, “The Messiah of Stockholm.” It takes place in Stockholm. I’d better say no more, or the Muse will wipe it out.

~ Cynthia Ozick

Cynthia Ozick Creativity Paris Review Writing Writing Process

The writer,' said Donald Barthelme, 'is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do.' In this mode of not-knowing, the thick-torsoed, literal, and crew-cut mind is moved to the sidelines in favor of the swinging, perceptive, light-footed, tutu-wearing subconscious.

~ George Saunders

George Saunders Writing Process

PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATHConventions bleed my soulsqueeze me oldwear me grey like a headstone in transit.It’s tradition and form—fear of the unknown—driving me deadin tight spaces darkly.I cry aloudbut who can hearwhen I stand alonein the middle of an art show….

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik On Being A Rat Poetry Rats Sylvia Plath Writing Writing Process

I don’t need to write. Madness or suicide are other options, though not nearly as compelling. But I want to create; I hope to create worlds in my own image, admittedly a self-centered plan. I want others to understand me better, pay more attention to me, like or love me for who I am. Maybe that’s it. Or maybe I should simply learn to say, “Let’s have lunch.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik On Being A Rat Writing Writing Process

This isn’t a religious book though I mention God, not a medical advisory though I speak of pain. It’s a circus, a mortuary, a grade school, a limousine ride. Will it be worth the paper it’s printed on or the screen you hold in your hand? I just hope you remember it next week.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Writing Writing Process

In this book, much is metaphorical, not as it seems. It’s written for writing’s sake, as if I were to say, “Let me tell you I’m dying.” Well of course I am. So are you.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Metaphors Writing Writing Process

You write what you know, and I know rock and roll.

~ Greg Kihn

Greg Kihn Rock And Roll Writing Craft Writing From The Heart Writing Process

A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss?

~ Mary Papas

Mary Papas Flash Fiction Short Stories Writing Writing Process

The gotta, as in: “I think I’ll stay up another fifteen-twenty minutes, honey, I gotta see how this chapter comes out.” Even though the guy who says it spent the day at work thinking about getting laid and knows the odds are good his wife is going to be asleep when he finally gets up to the bedroom. The gotta, as in: “I know I should be starting supper now — he’ll be mad if it’s TV dinners again — but I gotta see how this ends.” I gotta know will she live. I gotta know will he catch the shitheel who killed his father. I gotta know if she finds out her best friend’s screwing her husband. The gotta. Nasty as a hand-job in a sleazy bar, fine as a fuck from the world’s most talented call-girl. Oh boy it was bad and oh boy it was good and oh boy in the end it didn’t matter how rude it was or how crude it was because in the end it was just like the Jacksons said on that record — don’t stop til you get enough.

~ Stephen King

Stephen King Inspiration Writing Writing Process

If you are serious, and you want to make a living as an author, then you need to hustle. Period. If you can't make that quality, then you need to concentrate on your craft and practice more. One other thing, quality comes with practice. If you are prolific, then you become a better writer because you are writing. The more you do anything the better at it you will become. So in a way, quantity does add to quality.

~ Larry Correia

Larry Correia Writing Writing Advice Writing Books Writing Craft Writing Process

Start with a word. A word leads to a sentence, which leads to a paragraph, which leads to a chapter, which leads to a manuscript, which leads to a book..... just start with a word!

~ Mark Pettinger

Mark Pettinger Writing Writing Process

Q: Do you have any advice for upcoming writers who want to pen weird stories?A: READ, damn it. Fill your brain to the bursting point with the good stuff, starting with writers that you truly enjoy, and then work your way backward and outward, reading those writers who inspired the writers you love best. That was my path as far as Weird/Horror Fiction, starting with Lovecraft, and then working my way backward/outward on the Weird Fiction spiderweb. And don’t limit your reading. Read it all, especially non-fiction and various news outlets. You’d be surprised by how many of my story ideas were born while listening to NPR, perusing a blog, or paging through Vanity Fair.Once you have your fuel squared away, just write what you love, in whatever style and genre. You’ll never have fun being someone you’re not, so be yourself. When a singer opens their mouth, what comes out is what comes out.Also, don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to walk away. Writing isn’t for everyone, and that’s totally fine. One doesn’t need to be a writer to enjoy being a reader and overall fan of genre or wider fiction.

~ T.e. Grau

T.e. Grau Writing Advice Writing Process

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

~ Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing From The Heart Writing Process

Want to be a writer? take a good book a good pen and a notepad to bed with you every night of your life.

~ Ken Scott

Ken Scott Writing Process

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.

~ Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert Authors Creative Process Writing Writing Process

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.

~ Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami Novelist Writing Writing Process

I'm writing a book. I'm almost finished. I numbered the pages. Now all I have to do is fill them in.

~ Steven Wright

Steven Wright Writing Process

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg adress was so short. The laws of prose writing are immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. Fr letter to Maxwell Perkins 1945

~ Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway Gettysburg Adress Writing Process

Many a good story has been found in the bottom of a decent Rioja.

~ Ken Scott

Ken Scott Good Story Rioja Writing Process

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

~ Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry Creative Process Literary Technique Writing Process

The trouble is, writing the damn thing is like unscrewing your skull and pouring the contents of your brain into an empty tank. The tank has a shape, more or less - has more or less defined edges, a bottom and sides. But what it mostly has is volume: a hungry space I've somehow got to fill.

~ Mike Carey

Mike Carey Writing Writing Process

The effect your readers want is for what they read to trigger in them the sights and sounds and smells of what's happening in the story. They don't want approximations, they don't want a report, they want to experience the story's reality.

~ Ray Rhamey

Ray Rhamey Writing Process

Always remember that writing is an alliance between author and reader. With every line we put down on the page, we need to leave room for the reader's imagination and intellect.

~ Hal Zina Bennett

Hal Zina Bennett Writing Writing Craft Writing Process

A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under.

~ Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson Writing Process

Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I’m too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I’m syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style.

~ Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith Writing Writing Craft Writing Process

I miss the days when I was alone with my characters and no one else knew them except me.

~ Lian Hearn

Lian Hearn Characters Writing Process

Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishing isn’t easy, but it’s fun and sometimes even lucrative. Plus, your book could change the world.

~ Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki Self Publishing Writing Writing Process

A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE.

~ Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki Self Publishing Writing Writing Process

You pull a book from the shelf and there was an invention... Almost like cooking, I thought sleepily. Instead of heat transforming the ingredients, there's pure invention, the spark, the hidden element. What resulted was more than the sum of parts... At one level it was obvious enough how these separarte parts were tipped in and deployed. The mystery was in how they were blended into somthing cohesive and plausible, how the ingredients were cooked into something so delicious. As my thought scattered and I drifted toward the borders of oblivion, I thought I almost understood how it was done.

~ Ian Mcewan

Ian Mcewan Writing Process
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