No writing is effortless. I’m not saying you can’t have a good day where the words just kind of flow, but even those words have to be edited. Probably more than once. And I’m not...

When I started to learn how to read, I discovered the same kind of power. I could create an environment that I didn’t have, and I could order this environment in the way that I...

I’d written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one’s own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I’d made a habit–and eventually a profession–of...

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...

Writing is the neck muscle allowing us to see the important stuff in our periphery.

If you start to revise before you’ve reached the end, you’re likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing–and reading–is a solitary business. And it’s good to know...

There will be pages. Lots and lots of pages. Most of the pages will have letters on them, and a vast majority of these letters will be in the Roman alphabet.

It’s the writing that teaches you.

In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a...

A dear and long-time friend,… asked me, “Jack, how long does it usually take you to write a book?” I replied, “Of course it depends on the project and its requirements, each book has its...

Style and voice are different. Style is standard conventions of writing. Voice is the distinct way an individual puts words together. All good writers have a near-uniform understanding of style but a voice all their...

Contrary to popular belief, people always say “It was a pleasure doing business with you”. It is the only thing that has stayed with me after an assignment. Always mix business with pleasure. That is...

Sometimes you have to tell a a bunch of lies to get at the truth.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

the focus one finds in the grammar books is on the wrong forms, on forms detached from the underlying (or overarching) form that must be in place before any technical terms can be meaningful or...

A successful story always offers its audience more than a simple resolution of events. A story offers a dramatic affirmation of human needs that are acted out to resolution and fulfillment. Even when that resolution...

Voice is really about letting your characters loose.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn’t.

One of the key secrets of great writing is knowing where to start and when to stop.

bad guy” anymore, he’s the BAD GUY!

I’ve learned that the creative life may or may not be the apex of human civilization, but either way it’s not what I thought it was. It doesn’t make you special and sparkly. You don’t...

…the most beautiful things don’t always make you happy – often they make you weep…

People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.

Whenever I listen to an artist or an art historian I’m struck by how much they see and how much they know–and how much I don’t.Good art writing should therefore do at least two things....

A blank page is no empty space. It is brimming with potential… It is a masterpiece in waiting — yours.

God, Himself, wrote the 10 into stone with his own finger. He told the epic of mankind, our origins and our future, in a book. For me, there is no more noble a cause and...

voice.” You haven’t learned to analyze your writing with a critical eye, to rip it apart and figure out why it isn’t doing exactly what you want.

On Writing: “A multitude of improbabilities can be forgiven as long as enough plausibility has been established.

You can’t have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.

I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.

Thousands of years ago, there were no writers; just storytellers. I would love to be a storyteller but I am just a writer. I don’t appeal to the ears; I appeal to the mind.

We’re not mad. We’re inhabited

Just write. That’s my only tip. And read. I guess that’s two.

Writing is hard. That’s why so few people stick to it and actually finish things. And why you have a right to be immensely proud when you finish something.”[There Is No Such Thing as Writers’...

An idea for a story can be anything. The sky is not the limit, the limit is beyond it.

From school desks with inkwells and scratchy nibs on paper to sweaty finger prints on a tablet… technology progression yes… style?

Find the problem, find the story.

[G]reat stories communicate simple truths that reflect the poetic dimensions of the human soul. Not only do powerful characters help us understand our lives, their stories reflect our core values as human beings.

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...