Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please wi...
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.
Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for...
Francie always remembered what that kind teacher told her. You know, Francie, a lot of people would think that these stories that you’re making up all the time were terrible lies because they are not...
Don’t wait. Writers are the only artists I know of who expect to get somewhere by waiting. Everyone knows you have to dance to be a dancer, you have to sing to be a singer, you have to act to be an ac...
Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily...
Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.
Rejection is the run in the pantyhose of life.
For every idea that's been done to DEATH, there's a child being BORN who hasn't read it yet. Don't kill your dragons.
I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not commun...
Graft at your craft!
Act one: put your characters in a tree. Act two: throw rocks at them. Act three: get them down again.
I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that you get me wet. Make up your mind, Mr. Writer, and for once in your life be the flowers that smells...
I've tried to explain to people that I don't 'love' writing any more than I 'love' breathing. It's something I do and it's something I need. If I thought about it as a love/hate thing, I probably woul...
Writing is like a lump of coal. Put it under enough pressure and polish it enough and you might just end up with a diamond. Otherwise, you can burn it to keep warm.
You can only write by putting words on a paper one at a time.
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
One idea to a sentence is still the best advice that anyone has ever given on writing.
It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents and collect an allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. C...
Trust your instincts. Do not confuse ego with instinct. Ego has to be set aside if you want to improve, and we should always want to improve. There is no glass ceiling on being better.