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The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, ...more

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When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of course you do. When you're writing, you're creating your own worlds.

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As it happened, all three of us turned out to be real writers--a coincidence almost too large to be termed mere coincidence in a society where literal...more

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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...more

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Some memories were all right, but others were dangerous.

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...so I think writers are made and not born. But what you choose to write is buried so deeply inside it's like lodestones inside you and sooner or lat...more

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you must not come lightly to the blank page.

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As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun woul...more

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Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.

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When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

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I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see...more

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I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they "don't have time to read." This ...more

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For me, that emotional payoff is what it’s all about. I want you to laugh or cry when you read a story...or do both at the same time. I want your hear...more

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I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone on...more

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If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with th...more