Inspiration comes from your writing. Thoughts meander subliminally through our subconscious, at night when we sleep the brain is working. In the act of writing, phrases come out and you think: wow, did I write...

I’m my characters’ galley slave.

All writers pen sad stories to garner sympathy, writing is after all for the abandoned of the society: the ink-leech, spewing black blood and sucking innocent souls.

If grammar is the skeleton of expression and usage the flesh and blood, then style is the personality.

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.

Always remember that writing is an alliance between author and reader. With every line we put down on the page, we need to leave room for the reader’s imagination and intellect.

In leaving the café I asked Joyce how long he had been working on Ulysses.”About five years,” he said. “But in a sense all my life.””Some of your contemporaries,” I said, “think two books a...

Can we all pause a moment to appreciate the artistry of that sentence? “Sitting casually on the floor, a guard sat…” That’s freaking art right there! Someone nominate this thing for the Hugo Award already!

Part of being a writer is defending your vision and not caving in to outside pressures.

Replace your old books with the book you’ve always wanted to write.

You cannot be a great writer in a shop where words are sold in tens and twenties.

For the vision of a novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he relates them; specialised because since he is a...

I say fuck the old advice ‘show, don’t tell.’ It’s called story TELLING for a reason, and I’ll stick to it!

I know it’s difficult in the beginning. But, listen. If you have the impulse to write, do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, and write.

For me, not knowing your theme until your finished is like using a scalpel to turn a kangaroo into Miss Universe – there will be a lot of deep cuts, and there’s a high chance...

This is the secret to mastering any discipline: as you conquer one, you’ll find it easier to tackle another.

If I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now I have your attention.

Fiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination.

If the story you’re telling, is the story you’re telling, you’re in deep shit.

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.

Sixteen unseeing stone of disheveled male slammed into her; Robin was knocked off her feet and catapulted backwards, handbag flying, arms windmilling, towards the void beyond the lethal staircase.

I don’t just want a gripping story line. I shoot for the three dimensional literary Braille to a silent Scorsese movie

You are not an “author,” you are a writer. If your books are still selling like hotcakes ten years after your demise, THEN you’re an author.

Every once in a bestseller list, you come across a truly exceptional craftsman, a wordsmith so adept at cutting, shaping, and honing strings of words that you find yourself holding your breath while those words...

A writer’s problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found what is true,...

I should be writing …

You don’t create a diamond by rubbing it with fluffy bunny slippers. You need to apply pressure and heat. There are enough air-headed cheerleaders out there. We need more drill sergeants.

Good fiction makes the truth believable.

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as any one would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease,...

Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even....

Stories that pander to your every readerly desire and whim are like overly loyal dogs that live for the simple glow of your approval. I’m a cat person. I like a little aloofness in my...

If God inspires your writing, others will know because it will inspire them when they read it.

When you write, it’s like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long,...

Meredith,’ interposed Celia, ‘makes one of his women, Emilia in England, say that poetry is like talking on tiptoe; like animals in cages, always going to one end and back again.

On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost...

Jesus–if Kilgore Trout could only write!” Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout’s unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.

Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book.

The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.

The only ‘ironclad rules’ in writing fiction are the laws of physics and the principles of grammar, and even those can be bent.

Storytellers don’t show, they tell. I’m sticking with that.

Don’t be afraid of what you’re creating.

I admire the person who can write it right off. Mencken once said that a person who thinks clearly can write well. But I don’t think clearly–too many thoughts bump into one another. Trains of...

When will someone write from the point of view of a joke, that is to say theway God sees events from above?

You cherry-pick events that are relevant to the story question and construct a gauntlet of challenge (read: the plot) that will force the protagonist to put his money where his mouth is. Think baptism by...

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

I had declared in public my desire to be a writer … I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in...

Chapter one is where you reach out your hand to the reader and say, “Come, let’s have an adventure together.

She logged in and read a few of her old posts, smiling at the issues she had raged about and shaking her head at how some of the rants now seemed pretentious and judgmental. She...

Radošs darbs nav veicams kaut kādā brīdī un pēc pavēles. Daiļnieks var strādāt tikai tad, kad jūtas aicināts! Ja vēlaties uzrakstīt kaut ko lielāku, tad jums jāiemācās iedvesmi organizēt – izsaukt pēc pavēles!… Vispirms mēģiniet...

During 30 years of earning my daily bread as a writer I have learned many lessons about our craft. The most significant of those lessons is that I still have many lessons to learn about...