You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
reading on-writing
In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.
truth on-writing
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
women writing money fiction on-writing
I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.
writers on-writing writing-advice
A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
writers on-writing
Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.
Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts.
writers on-writing authors
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
writing on-writing
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
writing on-writing revision
A novel rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise.
writing on-writing simile
A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.
writing fiction on-writing on-fiction
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
writing words on-writing
Never put off writing until you are better at it.
writing encouragement on-writing improvement
All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.
writing stories storytelling obsession on-writing
Write to your fear.
You can fix anything but a blank page.
writing storytelling on-writing
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason -- if the worlds are in any way blurred -- the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'.
writing language advice words on-writing
The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written.(, 8 September 1935)
writing honesty self-expression creative-process integrity on-writing expectations
V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -- that word again -- have even further ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things -- like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes.
design writing words on-writing
Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest.
writing story on-writing plot
It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things-- a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring-- with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader's spine-- the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That's the kind of writing that most interests me.
I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.
Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
language power-of-words communication on-writing
I hope that I capture something in my work that is about the elusive, the magical and powerful and the transformative. The writing in itself is transformative for me.
creativity on-writing writer-quote
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