885 Quotes About Writing-advice

If you want to be an authentic writer, learn to tell the truth, to wrestle with it, to reflect on it, and then to write about it with great care. And great humility.

Any of the following crimes against fiction can prevent the publication of your novel. Committing several will prevent the publication of novels by anyone whose name is similar to yours, just in case.

On writingEach story is two stories: its absence and presence, its voice and its silence. What would the world be without this particular story? What is the world now, with this story?Write the ones that fill a void. The ones whose absence would mean a less complete world.

I try not to think of writing as a burden at all. My job is to fall in love… It’s really about being inspired and being in love… If it starts to feel like a responsibility and it starts to feel like homework... I need it to feel like a love affair.

The only answer a truly dedicated writer has to “What are your best books (or stories)?” is “My second best is the one I’m writing now, and my best is the one I’ll be writing next.

Wilmer Stone read our stories to us in a monotone as if he were reading from the pages of a phone directory. What we learned with each stab of pain was that the words themselves and not the inflections supplied by the reader had to carry the emotion of the story.

I think I had two choices: I could either work a nine-to-five job and just get by until I retired, or I could write. There isn’t anything else I’m passionate about enough to put this much work into.

While formula is good, there’s such a thing as too much of it. When technical rules are followed too closely, it shows, and if given the choice between a perfectly-coiffed, rule-abiding novel, and a damned good book with a some serious heart and soul, I’ll take the latter every time.

The Author Promise: Determine what you are going to give the reader, deliver it and never break that promise.