Writing-advice Quotes

I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as ...

It's basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes...

about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.

In general, shorter is better. If you can encapsulate your idea into a single captivating sentence, ...

No good story is quite true.

Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can...

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on you...

Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates wit...

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

...and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your w...

I never presume to give advice on writing. I think the best way to learn to write is to read booksan...

People who want to write books do so because they feel it to be the easiest thing they can do. They ...

Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When...

You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and wr...

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you...

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a write...

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you...

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always ri...

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about...

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumber...

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and w...

I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, t...

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought...

I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course...

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

I would write:"The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the spli...

Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must WriteRule Two: Finish What Your StartRule Three: You...

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, b...

On Hayao MiyazakiI told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movem...

One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the...

There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it ...

Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation.

You need to take out the stuff that’s just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All...

Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it...

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatic...

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when i...

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should ...

... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.

But if you needed to HAVE AN IDEA, boredom could be to a roadblocked novel what chemotherapy was to ...

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In...

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creat...

At its most basic we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the mos...

Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, "Oh well, let it go, that's what copyedi...

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay

I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I...

T.S. Eliot said to me 'There’s only one way a poet can develop his actual writing – apart from self-...

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess ha...

Write at the edges of the day.

It's a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to...

People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you do...

What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter’s even...

I’ll be blasted’, he said, ‘if I ever write another word, or try to write another word, to please Ni...

When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I sha...

Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.

I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it...

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you...

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you...

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanic...

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer th...

Don't be 'a writer.' Be writing.

Beware, then, of the long word that's no better than the short word: "assistance" (help), "numerous"...

But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word tha...

The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like t...

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush a...

It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If...

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush a...

...being "rather unique" is no more possible than being rather pregnant.

I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the d...

There are some writers who sweep us along so strongly in their current of energy--Normal mailer, Tom...

But apart from these lazinesses of logic, what makes the story so tired is the failure of the writer...

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.

Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: "At the end of an inter...

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are ...

What is writing but an expression of my own life?

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some ...

Talent is cheap. What matters is discipline.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of ins...

Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram--it's the ea...

You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your ...

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.

Life is not a submarine.

I honestly think in order to be a writer, you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writ...

There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that ...

Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wrac...

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report wri...

If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be un...

You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing ...

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can g...

On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and wri...

Go where the pain is, go where the pleasure is.

You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers...

If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," I...

The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes...

Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class Fra...

...a writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laboriou...

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like all-embracing compassion.

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from.

My early attempts writing plays, which are very poetic, did not use the language that I work in now....