If you want to be a writer, you have to keep writing, all the time, and when you're not writing, be thinking about and planning writing.
Writers, that deep dark secret is not something you should hide from the world. It is your gift. Take it from memory and illuminate it in literature,shake the dust from it, unless it will get you arre...
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...
writing - like any art - is so damned personal that there really isn't a right way to do it. You do what works for you; what matters is getting the words on the paper. Sure, if you hear advice, and it...
Rule #1: Writing is for the creative brain. Editing is for the critical brain. Separate them appropriately.
There's no such thing as the middle of nowhere. Something is happening everywhere. You just have to find the story in it.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
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...
I have no talent; it's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.
You can only write by putting words on a paper one at a time.
About clichés. Avoid them like the plague.
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...
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.
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.
Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.
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.
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
I'm going to write a novel and get it published. I'm going to do it because writing a novel is worthwhile and because I have the talent to do it.I'm going to do it because I have something important t...
The beautiful unruliness of literature is what makes it so much fun to wander through: you read Jane Austen and you say, oh, that is IT. And then you turn around and read Sterne, and you say, Man, tha...
What you don't write is often more important than what you do