Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.
Get your story written, you always have the second and third draft to fix things like tense, 1st vs 3rd person, the exact right word, etc.
There is no ceremony, no initiation ritual, no secret hand-shake. All you need to be a writer is to write.
No good story is quite true.
On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.
People say that writers write for money. From my own experience that's not true. I write for me. I publish for money.
Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or comforting. I think they should be raw. They should be written as perfectly as possible, but what th...
Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.
A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from.
Don't have every dialog go in a straight line to solve the problem. Let your characters argue, be sarcastic, disagree or joke around.
I've been rejected a hundred times. It just takes that one person who totally believes in you!
I made a decision long ago not to make any apologies. Romance rocks, and even though my books don't actually fall into the romance genre, I tout them as very much being about the romance. It's fun. We...
I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as a pianist runs his scales for ten years before he gives his concert: because when he gives that conc...
I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs.
Clarity trumps all rules.
It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with...
Problem, purpose, conflict, goal. Use them. Think about them while you are in the planning phase of your novel; keep these elements at the back of your mind to guide you while you write. When you have...
There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.
Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
Keep being bold on the page, and in life, and people cannot ignore you forever.
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