WRITING QUOTES XXVII

quotations about writing

There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.

EUDORA WELTY

On Writing

Tags: Eudora Welty


I've got splinters in my nose from the best publishing doors in town.

RITA MAE BROWN

interview, Time, March 18, 2008

Tags: Rita Mae Brown


I think any start has to be a false start because really there's no way to start. You just have to force yourself to sit down and turn off the quality censor. And you have to keep the censor off, or you start second-guessing every other sentence. Sometimes the suspicion of a possible false start comes through, and you have to suppress it to keep writing. But it gets more persistent. And the moment you know it's really a false start is when you start ... it's hard to put into words.

ELIF BATUMAN

The Paris Review, winter 2012


Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.

GAIL CARSON LEVINE

interview, RIF Reading Planet

Tags: Gail Carson Levine


Writing a killer first line to a novel is an art form in which there are a few masters and a great many apprentices.

CHUCK WENDIG

"25 Things to Know about Writing the First Chapter of Your Novel", Terrible Minds


I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.

LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS

interview, Bomb Magazine, fall 1997

Tags: Louis Auchincloss


I write what I want to write. Period. I don't write novels-for-hire using media tie-in characters, I don't write suspense novels or thrillers. I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I'll just keep writing them until they do sell--and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime.

BENTLEY LITTLE

"The Summoning: An Interview with Bentley Little", Giants of the Genre

Tags: Bentley Little


Brevity is the sister of talent.

ANTON CHEKHOV

letter to A. P. Chekhov, April 11, 1889

Tags: Anton Chekhov


Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

SAUL BELLOW

Nobel lecture, December 12, 1976

Tags: Saul Bellow


[Rejection] made me quit writing once. For six months. I started up again when my then seven-year-old son asked me to start writing again because I was too grumpy when I wasn't writing.

KIRBY LARSON

interview, Author Turf, March 6, 2014


In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.

CESARE PAVESE

This Business of Living, May 4, 1942

Tags: Cesare Pavese


In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

DORIS LESSING

The New York Times, April 22, 1984


Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English.

GLEN COOK

interview, SF Site, September 2005


The publishers want series, obviously. Originally, they wanted me to do the Garrett series along with another similar series, so it would be one book every six months. Eventually I'd just do the outlines and they'd get some poor unknown author to flesh out the stories. That's why you see so many books by a famous author and an unknown. You can make half the money basically by selling your name. The thing is, once your name is on enough bad books, maybe it isn't worth all that much any more.

GLEN COOK

interview, Quantum Muse


There is no ideal length, but you develop a little interior gauge that tells you whether or not you're supporting the house or detracting from it. When a piece gets too long, the tension goes out of it. That word--tension--has an animal insistence for me. A piece of writing rises and falls with tension. The writer holds one end of the rope and the reader holds the other end--is the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?

JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

"Everything is more complicated than you think", The Economist, November 14, 2011

Tags: John Jeremiah Sullivan


Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.

ROBERT REED

Lincoln Journal Star, January 11, 2004


I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

FRED ALLEN

attributed, Books: Their History, Art, Power, Glory, Infamy and Suffering According to Their Creators, Friends and Enemies

Tags: Fred Allen


Writing is a tough thing and you only get better with practice. Just like free throws.

NICK WESTFALL

"Man writes directorial debut movie 'Finding Home'", myfox8, March 30, 2017


I tend to be a plotter, just because I do have to write an outline of the book for my publisher, and I like to have an idea of where I'm headed. That said, I don't treat the outline as cast in stone, and I often get better ideas as I write, so the outline is a living thing. What often drives change is when I start writing a particular character and she or he asserts themselves more strongly than I thought they would.

JEFF ABBOTT

"At the Mercy of Storytellers: MysteryPeople Q&A with Jeff Abbott", Mystery People, July 17, 2017

Tags: Jeff Abbott


One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: James Baldwin