Writing Advice Quotes - Page 3

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. A finished manuscript is AWESOME! So go, go, go! *waves pompoms*

Don't let writers block push you around. Figure out what the problem is,whether it's with the ms or it's in your personal life, and face it head on. Don't stop writing. Just try really hard to work through it.

Darynda Jones

Writer's Block: making authors miserable since the Stone Age.

Max Hawthorne

Sometimes, I’ll craft a scene that’s so poignant; on the last keystroke I’ll raise my hands high overhead and scream “Yes!” at the top of my lungs. I have yet to experience an orgasm so powerful and fulfilling.

Max Hawthorne

You are an author! You will be a published author. Take pride in that, and present only your best work. Then, continue to improve, so your best gets even better.

Courage Knight

Writing is like knitting. Stitch after stitch, word by word, and before you know it you have a book ... or a jumper!

Luggs

Any advice for how to be a successful author?""Yes. Don't be a woman. And be dead. And do both at the same time, if you can.

Michelle Franklin

writing - like any art - is so damned personal that there really isn't a right way to do it. You do what works for you; what matters is getting the words on the paper. Sure, if you hear advice, and it works, then excellent. But, if it doesn't, you have to realize that perhaps nothing is wrong with you. You don't jive with the advice.

Mur Lafferty

When it comes to overcoming writing hurdles, getting sick is like suffering a review from a critic with an axe to grind; you can't let it get you down!

Max Hawthorne

Graft at your craft!

Andrew Thomas

How to write a book? Start writing,continue writing and finish writing.

Bangambiki Habyarimana

I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, to hold interest. No matter how worthy the message of something, if it's dull, you're just not communicating.-Poul_Anderson

Poul Anderson

Our lives make awesome stories, especially if you don't get too attached to the thread of your own narrative.

Michelle Tea

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

Stephen King

I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as a pianist runs his scales for ten years before he gives his concert: because when he gives that concert, he can't be thinking of his fingering or of his hands, he has to be thinking of his interpretation. He's thinking of what he's trying to communicate.

Katherine Anne Porter

What you don't write is often more important than what you do

Ernest Hemingway

Rhythm, repetition, making patterns--these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or a story, but they are craved as well because of our primordial need for reassurance, the sense of security we get from moving over the known. A mystery doesn't lose power in revisiting. Writing is not just to know, it is also to console. We need to be reminded that we are part of the obscure rhythm of birth and decade. It is the humming that matters.

Breyten Breytenbach

At its most basic we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style...but as we move along, you'd do well to remember that we are also talking about magic.

Stephen King

If you have nothing good to say about someone, write a book about them. - Carmen Fox, Life Motto

Carmen Fox

Tighten your prose so the story flows.

Anna Dobritt

Writing is a solitary endeavor, being an author is not.

Karen A. Chase

Any time a beloved character is killed off, it affects the audience in a very powerful way, especially in a series.

Darynda Jones

I've been rejected a hundred times. It just takes that one person who totally believes in you!

Darynda Jones

I think the first draft is so challenging because that elusive BALANCE is so challenging.

Darynda Jones

Not knowing stuff - like how your story ends before you start writing - is the seed of a lot of writer’s block.

Dan Alatorre

The more time you can put between you and your manuscript, the more fresh your eyes become and the more mistakes you’ll catch.

Dan Alatorre

What I can tell you is DO IT. Publish book one and get book two out as soon as possible. There are very few Harper Lee’s. Most of us are going to have to write a few books to get good at it.

Dan Alatorre

Don’t listen to any advice from anybody who has fewer published bestsellers than you, or anybody with more bestsellers than you. Or anybody with the exact same number of bestsellers as you. Don’t listen to any advice at all, even this advice I’m telling you right now.

Dan Alatorre

Here’s my advice: you hold in your heart everything you need to know to write anything your story needs written. Dig deep and go where the pain and fear and joy are, and put it out there. The minute you shy away from pure honesty in your writing, you become a liar and people will smell it. People are suckers for the truth and they know it when they see it. Open your soul and they will stop and watch.

Dan Alatorre

You need an interesting voice. A grabber opening is great, compelling characters are awesome, but the voice – your unique voice – is what carries your story. Find your voice. Own your voice. Learn to tell interesting stories using your unique voice. That is the key.

Dan Alatorre

In the book (Savvy Stories) you see some very real, very personal moments. The first week of Savvy’s life was the longest week of ours. We spent five days in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) worrying that our newborn daughter might die. It was touch and go for a while, and it was extremely difficult to write about. Chapter two gets a lot of people crying. But because we put that honesty out there, readers said “Okay, I can trust this guy.” Then they were better able to laugh with us, too.

Dan Alatorre

Fresh writing and an original twist on an old idea. As much as this term is hated in the industry, it doesn't make it any less true. High concept. Simply put, you take a universal concept, something that has been done a million times (because everything has been done a million times), and add a fresh twist to it. Something no one saw coming. But mostly fresh writing! Keep it clean, simple, and compelling.

Darynda Jones

Screw the beaten path! Do your thing. Write the best story you can. the rest will fall into place.

Darynda Jones

I made a decision long ago not to make any apologies. Romance rocks, and even though my books don't actually fall into the romance genre, I tout them as very much being about the romance. It's fun. We're all obsessed with it. And it's human nature. Remember, NO APOLOGIES! Write what 's in your heart!

Darynda Jones

You take a universal concept, something that has been done a million times (because everything has been done a million times), and add a fresh twist to it. Something no one saw coming. But mostly fresh writing! Keep it clean, simple, and compelling.

Darynda Jones

ALWAYS hook a reader. If a detail is unnecessary, it doesn't belong in your work, long or short! Make everything intriguing. If you have to describe a desk, make it awesome.

Darynda Jones

Let your eyes be the camera and your imagination be the set.

Raleigh Daniels

Whenever I write I always transport myself into the story to get a better glimpse to what I am capturing.

Raleigh Daniels

A love of writing is far greater than any word count.

Molly Looby

I learn from everything I do, right and wrong. I think it helps me grow as a writer and a person.

Darynda Jones

I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.

Ray Bradbury

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

Stephen King

A clever trick does not a concept make.

Larry Brooks

Remember: Bad timing equals great plot twists.

A.L. Mabry

You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born.

Anne Lamott

Rule #1: Writing is for the creative brain. Editing is for the critical brain. Separate them appropriately.

James D. Beers

Act one: put your characters in a tree. Act two: throw rocks at them. Act three: get them down again.

Anonymous

Remember...Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don’t worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don’t make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why you’re here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don’t stop. Don’t question. Don’t quit. Don’t stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer’s block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up.

Bob Thurber

I usually end have one outrageous minor character. He or she says the stuff I wish I had said in real life. Readers will love that character.

Dan Alatorre

I was always taught to write the book you want to read. It's a philosophy I haven't wavered from since.

E.A. de Graaf

If you can't give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get the wheels turning, sound off. When your brakes jam, try going in reverse. If often works.

Henry Miller

Cutting words can cut your readers but if the intention is pure, the story will resonate loud and true.

Veronica Purcell

Ultimately, then, creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them.

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

Writers need to be open to trying new things. My first bestseller was a cookbook, and from that experience I learned things about marketing a book that benefitted me greatly.

Dan Alatorre

Don't have every dialog go in a straight line to solve the problem. Let your characters argue, be sarcastic, disagree or joke around.

Dan Alatorre

The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat; on the other hand, neither should the flesh be too thin, so that the bones show through. If the flesh is thick enough, and if the flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectable and the motion of the parts will reveal the articulation.

Mortimer J. Adler

Read. Write. Read some more. Explore the universe through your writing. Practice and learn what moves you and what doesn't.

Darynda Jones

I think if a writer is being honest they’d admit to a file full of a dozen or more stories that are all started to varying degrees. They’re like the kid who wants to be a firefighter and a police officer and an astronaut.

Dan Alatorre

WHILE writing, just try to have fun with your ms. Enjoy the process, but push on. Always push toward the finish line!

Darynda Jones

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear>

Joan Didion

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Writing Advice Quotes - Page 3

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