Don't give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn't what you thought it would be. Given skill and a story that compels you, muster your determination and make what's on the page clo...
What is writing but an expression of my own life?
Description is the color in the canvas of your story.
I write to shed my sacred sorrows.
I would write:The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the split yam.Or:The child's clumsy fingers fumbled in sleep, feeling vainly for the wish of its dream.The ol...
If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.
One expert may be as good as another until one writes a book
You have to be in your middle thirties before you have anything worth saying.
If you only had a year left to live, what book would you write?Now, write that book.
Originality is not writing the story that has never been told, but writing the stories only you can tell.
Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Te...
There are a lot of ways for a novelist to create suspense, but also really only two: one a trick, one an art.
Someone asked me, 'How do you write a book?' I said, 'I live with a pen in one hand.
All great writers share one thing in common:They finished their books.
Build your novel one word at a time. Remember that minutes = novels.
Q: What do you think is magical about fiction?DFW: ... The first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don't know what you're thinking or w...
Cutting words can cut your readers but if the intention is pure, the story will resonate loud and true.
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...
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.
It's a terrible mistake to let the perfect get in the way of the good. If you wait to publish until you have written a great book, you will never publish anything. Great books happen by chance, not by...