885 Quotes About Writing-advice

You will never learn how to write well if you don't learn how to edit.

Whenever I listen to an artist or an art historian I'm struck by how much they see and how much they know--and how much I don't.Good art writing should therefore do at least two things. It should teach us how to look: at art, architecture, sculpture, photography and all the other visual components of our daily landscape. And it should give us the information we need to understand what we're looking at.

Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.

The solution to entrapment in the narcissistic hothouse of self is to not relinquish autobiographical writing, but to expand the self by bringing one's curiosity to interface with more and more history and the present world.

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.

On Writing: "A multitude of improbabilities can be forgiven as long as enough plausibility has been established.

You gotta dig through the shit to get to the gold.

I recommend writing standing up from time to time. It's easier to dance when you finish writing.

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.