The privilege is not writing a novel, it’s to have someone read it. When you look at it that way, you realize the responsibility you have to put your very best on the page.

I feign knowledge of writing: that I know something about it, that I should have learned something after all these years, that I might know something tomorrow. I read too much and write too little,...

Writing is my life. Life is my hobby.

One of the ways to discover our toughness and resiliency is to look back at where we come from. (from Amazon description)

I feel the most alive when I write.

All writers have this vague hope that the elves will come in the night and finish any stories.

a purveyor of insipid wet-dreams.

It’s amazing how fast you can write when there’s a gun to your head.

The Baby Name book can be a very dangerous tool in the hands of a prolific author.

Sometimes a fresh perspective is all you need to get a second wind on the revision process. Try viewing your material on a different medium; it will shed a new light on the inconsistencies in...

Cowok itu jarang nulis. Sekalinya iya, ada dua kemungkinan :a. Langsung bagus dan jadi dewa (macamnya Kak Fauzi : dua dari dua buku yang aku beli mengesankan ^^. Sayang Genere Fantasy enggak dilirik orang kebanyakan)b....

Writers haven’t got any rockets to blast off. We don’t even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle. We haven’t got any military might. So what can literature do in the face of the merciless onslaught...

No one ever does the last thing on their list.

I’m much more than a writer – I’m someone who puts different words together in an interesting way.

A writer writes. There are no exceptions to this reality. No excuses. Stop wasting time talking about your stories and get them on paper.

I can tell you that the writing of a book, no matter how deeply, profoundly personal-if it is literature, if you have attended to the formidable task of illumination the human heart in conflict with...

Writers are often given the gift of being spectacularly unhappy, so that they can record the full depth of feeling.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the...

One last characteristic of the memoir that is important to recognize is one which also applies to essays, and which Georg Lukacs described as “the process of judging.” This may seem problematic to some, since…we...

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less...

Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn’t build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby.

But if the Busyness = Status equation works, it’s strictly because a social game has emerged wherein relatively privileged, educated people with all kinds of Choice disguise their decisions to be busy as manifestations of...

Indentations on the page, words, my friends, and I will share them with you.

The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can’t, you’re dead

How is your book doing?” or “How many copies have you sold?” are the questions for a salesman. To a writer, you better ask “What did you write today?”.

Writing is not a hobby. Collecting stamps or coins is a hobby. Writing is a calling.

First time I ever put pen to paper, I had one goal – to build something no one had ever thought of before.

Writers write because they’re writers. Because their imaginations boil up inside of them, waiting to overflow into the written word. Ordinary people have little capacity for unyielding imagination, whereas the natural-born writer can do little...

If you can’t stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague...

I’ve had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.

The next best thing after finishing writing a chapter is starting a new one.

Write them all down. The mistakes and the blessings and the places you cracked in two. Write the prayers and the tantrums. The sacred and the profane. The open roads and the closed doors. Nothing...

I’m merely dying to be remembered for simply writing about my living memories

I sometimes think if I did not write I would be a madwoman. Now I am a sane woman with a lot of mad pages.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to...

The sooner you finish procrastinating, the sooner you can get back to your art.

Writers are people who write. By and large, they are not happy people. They’re not good at relationships. Often they’re drunks. And writing—good writing—does not get easier and easier with practice. It gets harder and...

I don’t think writers need to be insane. Just crazy.

Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules… afternoons are best, but I’m too lethargic for...

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world

At least I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if...

Someone asked me, ‘How do you write a book?’ I said, ‘I live with a pen in one hand.

Of course, I tried to surround myself with other people like me whose dream of writing was a constant burden….

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.

I think that’s why I write—the not knowing and the blasted good feeling I get out of it all.

If you are destined to become a writer, you can’t help it. If you can help it, you aren’t destined to become a writer. The frustrations and disappointments, not even to mention the unspeakable loneliness,...

We may think of ourselves as static anti-heroes, but in reality we’re dynamic protagonists just waiting for our courage to kick in.

Word count doesn’t tell me when a story ends, my characters will tell me.

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

Bulldogs are wonderful creatures to include in books. Besides their adorable bulldogishness, they provide the writer with a rare chance to use forms of the verb “snuffle.