quotations about writing
Writing a killer first line to a novel is an art form in which there are a few masters and a great many apprentices.
CHUCK WENDIG
"25 Things to Know about Writing the First Chapter of Your Novel", Terrible Minds
Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.
ROBERT REED
Lincoln Journal Star, January 11, 2004
Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE
interview, RIF Reading Planet
I think any start has to be a false start because really there's no way to start. You just have to force yourself to sit down and turn off the quality censor. And you have to keep the censor off, or you start second-guessing every other sentence. Sometimes the suspicion of a possible false start comes through, and you have to suppress it to keep writing. But it gets more persistent. And the moment you know it's really a false start is when you start ... it's hard to put into words.
ELIF BATUMAN
The Paris Review, winter 2012
There is no ideal length, but you develop a little interior gauge that tells you whether or not you're supporting the house or detracting from it. When a piece gets too long, the tension goes out of it. That word--tension--has an animal insistence for me. A piece of writing rises and falls with tension. The writer holds one end of the rope and the reader holds the other end--is the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?
JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN
"Everything is more complicated than you think", The Economist, November 14, 2011
I've got splinters in my nose from the best publishing doors in town.
RITA MAE BROWN
interview, Time, March 18, 2008
There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.
EUDORA WELTY
On Writing
One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Paris Review, autumn 1953
When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Paris Review, fall 1981
All good writing leaves something unexpressed.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Brevity is the sister of talent.
ANTON CHEKHOV
letter to A. P. Chekhov, April 11, 1889
At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
foreword, Sweet Bird of Youth
One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
I tend to be a plotter, just because I do have to write an outline of the book for my publisher, and I like to have an idea of where I'm headed. That said, I don't treat the outline as cast in stone, and I often get better ideas as I write, so the outline is a living thing. What often drives change is when I start writing a particular character and she or he asserts themselves more strongly than I thought they would.
JEFF ABBOTT
"At the Mercy of Storytellers: MysteryPeople Q&A with Jeff Abbott", Mystery People, July 17, 2017
From the moment I start a new novel, life's just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there's still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied. I begin to say the book's no good, far inferior to my earlier ones, until I've wrung torture out of every page, every sentence, every word, and the very commas begin to look excruciatingly ugly. Then, when it's finished, what a relief! Not the blissful delight of the gentleman who goes into ecstasies over his own production, but the resentful relief of a porter dropping a burden that's nearly broken his back ... Then it starts all over again, and it'll go on starting all over again till it grinds the life out of me, and I shall end my days furious with myself for lacking talent, for not leaving behind a more finished work, a bigger pile of books, and lie on my death-bed filled with awful doubts about the task I've done, wondering whether it was as it ought to have been, whether I ought not to have done this or that, expressing my last dying breath the wish that I might do it all over again!
ÉMILE ZOLA
The Masterpiece
The publishers want series, obviously. Originally, they wanted me to do the Garrett series along with another similar series, so it would be one book every six months. Eventually I'd just do the outlines and they'd get some poor unknown author to flesh out the stories. That's why you see so many books by a famous author and an unknown. You can make half the money basically by selling your name. The thing is, once your name is on enough bad books, maybe it isn't worth all that much any more.
GLEN COOK
interview, Quantum Muse
Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English.
GLEN COOK
interview, SF Site, September 2005
The same common-sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The New Statesman, February 25, 1933
In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.
DORIS LESSING
The New York Times, April 22, 1984