I read obsessively when I'm writing. I think there are two kinds of fiction writers, those who read incessantly while they write and those who can't read at all, lest their individual voices get overwhelmed, or tainted somehow. I'm the first kind. To use a painfully precious metaphor, I need fixed stars to navigate by, otherwise I get lost in the blankness of the page. ~ Lev Grossman
writing writer
I'm a struggling writer, I'm struggling to convince people I'm a writer.
writing writer authors struggle
I haven't written in a week. It's like holding your breath under water. You feel an awful constriction and then the instinct to propel yourself.
writing writer writers-block
The trouble with a baby, for writists, is that they take away your useful melancholy, even the energy to invent some.
And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. (How to Write with Style. Essay, 1985)
style writing writer ireland writers-quotes
I have yet to find that one perfect phrase that epitomizes all the mysteries of the universe. Luckily, I doubt to ever pen it in this lifetime, for then the seeking ends; miserable is the day the adventure ends.
writing author writer
I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth.
writing writer noir
Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.
writing praise writer write like habit criticism forgotten dislike benefit
You can never know enough about your characters
writing stories characters writer write
On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.
writing writer write pages
What happened was that sometimes I was, from a young age, put in the theater to watch movies because they kept me quiet and they kept me entertained, and they got me out from under the feet of my parents. So from a very early age, I went to the movies and I soon grew to prefer the life of the movies to my own life. The reality that the movies offered was preferable to the reality that I was experiencing. I became a child movie addict. I would go in with great pleasure and I'd never look at what was playing -- what was playing was unimportant. The fact was that I was entering a new world, an environment where not only was it much more attractive than my life was ordinarily, but also I could manipulate it to an extent by coming and going, and by looking at scenes or not, which I could not in my own life. I was subjected to my own domestic life. But I discovered a kind of power at the movies.
writing writing-life writing-from-the-heart
When I started to learn how to read, I discovered the same kind of power. I could create an environment that I didn't have, and I could order this environment in the way that I couldn't in my actual life. Then, when I learned to write, I learned that I could do this not only for myself, but for other people. I could create whole things that were believable, at least to myself, at that point. And in this way, I began to wield an authority and a power that I had not had before. In other words, every child goes through this. Some pick football and some pick the library. I picked the library.
writing writing-life writing-craft
To write freely is to walk a joyous, terrifying, exhilarating path naked through the world of the fully clothed.
writing writing-life inspirational
Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, or making friends. It's about doing what you love the best you know how. It's about making a heart pound in fear, shrink from rage, weep with understanding, or soar with excitement. It's about making worlds and living in them deeply enough someone else can join you there. It's about life changed to words, words changed to life, over and over and over again. It's about giving.
writing writing-life writing-philosophy
Writing is a 24/7 job. You live it, eat it, breathe it.. The pay can be pretty lousy, but you do it happily, because you love it! That, and from the day you started writing the voices in your head became a permanent fixture : ).. Oh, missed one out - You sleep it!
writing writing-life
Writing is the act of discovery.
writing writing-life writing-advice
No matter how many books I write, I will eventually get to fiction. That is where I'm going.
A key to a long, productive writing life is finding ways to support that life, emotionally and existentially.
All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts... I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
writing writing-life writing-process writing-craft
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.
I also know that not everyone will like what I do, and that there are many people who do love my work, and so I write for them, and for my own pleasure, and try not to brood too much over those who have different tastes. And I have written enough books now that I know the self-doubt and the anxiety are part of the creative process, and drive me to keep trying to do better, and keep me from becoming too cocksure about my writing, which is a form of creative death.
If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive--then don't be a writer.
I have to declare in all candor that no one interested in being published in our time can afford to be so naive as to believe that a book will make it merely because it's good.
writing writing-life publishers publishing
Behind every novel is a greater story of how it came to be published.
writing writing-life publishing
Books in the YA genre, in particular, should use proper grammar because they're more of an example to young people than adults books are.
writing ya editing grammar
Showing 3776 to 3800 of 3909 results
You must log in to post a comment.
There are no comments yet.