As writers, we have an obligation to respect our readers’ time.

The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds.

Once upon a time,” because the audience gets antsy.

I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the...

You can’t just come out and say what you have to say. That’s what people do on airplanes, when a man plops down next to you in the aisle seat of your flight to New...

If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I’ve seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence.’If you don’t -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to...

The root difficulty in all cases was the state of being blind and deaf to words– not seeing the words for the prose. Being adults, they had forgotten what every child understands, which is giving...

If you’re a writer, write. And always strive for excellence.

Good or bad, words have an impact on each of us. As a writer, I can only hope that the effects my words have on others are more often good than bad.

… yes I speak a different language – the dark fire of poetry – it flutters and gutters in tune with the mood…

The creative writer is compulsively concrete . . . . His fictional house should be haunted by ideas, not inhabited by them; they should flit past the windows after dark, not fill the rooms. The...

The object of storytelling, like the object of magic, is not to explain or to resolve, but rather to create and to perform miracles of the imagination. To extend the boundaries of the mysterious. To...

The most important step in developing skillful speech is to think before speaking.

There’s a difference between the ‘art’ of writing and the ‘craft’ of writing. Art is subjective, its beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, but craft is objective. There is a right way and...

grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.

The art of writing is the manipulation of words to ease the mind and free the imagination

A good writer reveals beauty in the mundane and truth in tragedy. Words are a tool; a currency of the mind, and the best writers weave passages into our hearts that our bones remember.

You need three things to become a successful novelist: talent, luck and discipline. Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have...

Lie naked on the table, and let them cut. Criticism is surgery, and humility is the anesthetic that allows you to tolerate it. In the end, the process will make you a stronger, more flexible,...

There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.

Comparisons deplete the actuality of the things compared… (“Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read”)

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book’s form hardened.

To my mind, the most important thing in any form of fiction is the human element, but only if it takes us beyond the everyday, into situations that examine the complexities that may fascinate or...

What I don’t write is as important as what I write.

A good part of the physical attraction [between the hero and heroine of a romance novel] comes to life during these exchanges as well, since language creates a meeting of the minds. I have long...

manuscriptmeanuscriptmoanuscriptmanurescriptand so on

I can’t wait to get back to writing today so I can see what happens next Kim Cormack

Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought...

Words are the bones. Writing is the lungs. Reading is like breathing.

An author needs a lot more than one person to succumb to his literary seductive charms, but, like Saul, he must realize that he doesn’t have to–and indeed cannot–capture the hearts of every possible reader...

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the...

So they spread the paintings on the lawn, and the boy explained each of them. “This is the school, and this is the playground, and these are my friends.” He stared at the paintings for...

Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to...

…I’ve never understood the logic that says a work doesn’t need to be judged on the quality of its writing or characters simply because its genre. On the other hand, I’ve also never understood the...

Pursue knowledge as though it is your life-blood, then you will know greatness!

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.

…at seventeen I tried to write poetry confining myself solely to Anglo-Saxon words – don’t know if it helped, but it made me more concrete …

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...

Authors – trust in your vision.

One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline…. But also every single day a kid needs a break.

… And the only way to find that honesty is to not overthink it.For your writing to come alive–to be multi-dimensional–you must barter away some control.

Good writing just isn’t that common.

If a pen can communicate our thoughts, dreams, and emotions and be the voice of our soul, then ink is the medium that carries the message.

Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick.

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

There is an underlying rhythm to all text. Sentences crashing fall like the waves of the sea, and work unconsciously on the reader. Punctuation is the music of language. As a conductor can influence the...

The paradox of writing is that you’re trying to use words to express what words can’t express.

…each part of a story, each word if possible, was to work frontally as well as laterally… (“Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read”)

Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Don’t over edit. Don’t second-guess yourself, or your ideas. Just write. Write every day, and keep at it. Don’t get discouraged with the rejections. Tape them up on your office wall, to remind you of...