Writing Advice Quotes - Page 5

A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.

Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must WriteRule Two: Finish What Your StartRule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial OrderRule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the MarketRule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold

Robert A. Heinlein

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.

Terry Pratchett

It's a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go. You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it...You have to let people see what you wrote.

Tina Fey

It's okay to write crap. Just don't try publishing it while it's still crap.

S.M. Blooding

The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.

David Nicholls

People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.

Toni Morrison

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

Raymond Chandler

If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.

Richard Rhodes

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

Ernest Hemingway

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the

Will Self

about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.

Khaled Hosseini

Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols.

Ernest Hemingway

Ten good lines out of four hundred, Emily—comparatively good, that is—and all the rest balderdash—balderdash, Emily.""I—suppose so," said Emily faintly.Her eyes brimmed with tears—her lips quivered. She could not help it. Pride was hopelessly submerged in the bitterness of her disappointment. She felt exactly like a candle that somebody had blown out."What are you crying for? demanded Mr. Carpenter.Emily blinked away tears and tried to laugh."I—I'm sorry—you think it's no good—" she said.Mr. Carpenter gave the desk a mighty thump."No good! Didn't I tell you there were ten good lines? Jade, for ten righteous men Sodom had been spared.""Do you mean—that—after all—" The candle was being relighted again."Of course, I mean. If at thirteen you can write ten good lines, at twenty you'll write ten times ten—if the gods are kind. Stop messing over months, though—and don't imagine you're a genius, either, if you have written ten decent lines. I think there's something trying to speak through you—but you'll have to make yourself a fit instrument for it. You've got to work hard and sacrifice—by gad, girl, you've chosen a jealous goddess. And she never lets her votaries go—not even when she shuts her ears forever to their plea.

L.M. Montgomery

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

Samuel Beckett

From my writer's workshop, "Know when it's time to put everything you've got on the page. Then, rip open a vein and do it!

Heather Burch

No good story is quite true.

Leslie Stephen

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.

Ernest Hemingway

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that.

Stephen King

Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

Neil Gaiman

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

Harper Lee

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

Mark Twain

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you.Tarantino - you can criticize everything that Quentin does - but nobody writes Tarantino stuff like Tarantino. He is the best Tarantino writer there is, and that was actually the thing that people responded to - they’re going ‘this is an individual writing with his own point of view’.There are better writers than me out there, there are smarter writers, there are people who can plot better - there are all those kinds of things, but there’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can.

Neil Gaiman

Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.

Deana J. Driver

Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You’ll never wish you’d held back a little more.

Catherynne M. Valente

Make today the day you begin that awesome idea you have had for years. Now go, write this book, and remember that today is an important day in history.

M. Kirin

It's good to write badly. Things can only get better.

Alan Dapre

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you’ll end up with less of either.

Don Roff

When you have something meaningful to say, you lose your desire for much grammar; for only in the incompetence of words does one seek the redeeming power of vocabulary.

King Samuel Benson

You will not publish 100% of the books you don’t write.

M. Kirin

There is no ceremony, no initiation ritual, no secret hand-shake. All you need to be a writer is to write.

M. Kirin

You have to be in your middle thirties before you have anything worth saying.

Peter Bowen

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.

Rob Bignell

Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.

Rob Bignell

When I told my teachers I wanted to be a writer, alot of them encouraged me to lower my expectations and to be more realistic. So I rode away on my magical, winged horse, spraying faerie dust behind me, and laughing manically as I went.

M.E. Vaughan

A writer must expect other people to criticize their work and open-mindedly consider all worthwhile suggestions. Martial arts master Bruce Lee advised anyone attempting to master a difficult enterprise to learn from other people but also liberally experiment and judiciously draw from our own well of intelligence and talent. ‘Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

Kilroy J. Oldster

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

Stephen King

A rain forest springs from the droppings of animals and grows greater than any cultivated garden; likewise, a great mass of literary skill springs from the droppings of writers that cross our minds through the reading we do.

Agona Apell

Writers don't suffer from insanity, they depend upon it!

Avijeet Das

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. ...this book...is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Stephen King

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

Philip Sidney

Beware of advice—even this.

Carl Sandburg

It takes courage to violate expectations, but sometimes the reward is a new level of success.

Donald Maass

Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly.

C. Kennedy

I have a hardcore attitude: a “self-published, ghost-written book” is wrong because the concept behind self publishing is that you have knowledge or emotions that you want to express. Whenpeople read a book—particularly a self-published one—they have the right to expect that it’s the person’s writing, not cleaned-up dictation or slapping a name on a book that someone else wrote.

Guy Kawasaki

Get your story written, you always have the second and third draft to fix things like tense, 1st vs 3rd person, the exact right word, etc.

Andromeda Edison

If you are serious, and you want to make a living as an author, then you need to hustle. Period. If you can't make that quality, then you need to concentrate on your craft and practice more. One other thing, quality comes with practice. If you are prolific, then you become a better writer because you are writing. The more you do anything the better at it you will become. So in a way, quantity does add to quality.

Larry Correia

Q: Do you have any advice for upcoming writers who want to pen weird stories?A: READ, damn it. Fill your brain to the bursting point with the good stuff, starting with writers that you truly enjoy, and then work your way backward and outward, reading those writers who inspired the writers you love best. That was my path as far as Weird/Horror Fiction, starting with Lovecraft, and then working my way backward/outward on the Weird Fiction spiderweb. And don’t limit your reading. Read it all, especially non-fiction and various news outlets. You’d be surprised by how many of my story ideas were born while listening to NPR, perusing a blog, or paging through Vanity Fair.Once you have your fuel squared away, just write what you love, in whatever style and genre. You’ll never have fun being someone you’re not, so be yourself. When a singer opens their mouth, what comes out is what comes out.Also, don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t be afraid to walk away. Writing isn’t for everyone, and that’s totally fine. One doesn’t need to be a writer to enjoy being a reader and overall fan of genre or wider fiction.

T.E. Grau

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

Ray Bradbury

Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it.

Christy Hall

It's basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes, in fact often, it doesn't and it just runs out of steam. The hope for me is that it will snowball. the best way to put it is that I have no particular method or technique per se, other than this: I plan nothing, I outline nothing, I start with an idea or an image or a line of dialogue and see where it leads me. Because I never know what the next page will contain, let alone the end of the book, I am perpetually surprised by the course that my characters take. The writing process is as full of surprises and twists for me as the reading experience is for my readers. I love the spontaneity of writing this way, the possibilities left open, the feeling that I am not constrained or committed to any given path. Every day, I am surprised by something. It may not be the most efficient way of writing, but it has served me well thus far.

Khaled Hosseini

Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn't much of a theory, but it was all Ruth could truly commit herself to at the moment. It was time to retire that old lecture, and her penance was to endure the compliments of her former credo.

John Irving

People who want to write books do so because they feel it to be the easiest thing they can do. They can read and write, they can afford any of the instruments of book writing such as pens, paper, computers, tape recorders, and generally by the time they have reached this decision, they have had a simple education.

Muriel Spark

Never try to keep it professional, keep it smutty, write with bodily fluids on sandpaper, and damn the men with clipboards in white suits, the literary bean-counters, the prose police.

Peter Selgin

I recommend writing standing up from time to time. It's easier to dance when you finish writing.

Diego Ramos

Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.

Jennifer Hudson Taylor

There is a difference between fresh and weird. You never want to throw your reader out of the story. Keep it fresh but natural.

Darynda Jones

If you don’t make time for writing, writing won’t make time for you.

Sandra Elaine Scott

Writings are thoughts in a defined moment.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you’ve written. Comedy pushes limits, makes people uncomfortable, and is a natural reaction to the environment. Otherwise, as I said, it is forced. Let it flow and give your characters permission to cross a line or two, but only if you can take the heat afterward.

Darynda Jones

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Writing Advice Quotes - Page 5

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