An opportunity lost may have motivated us to find a satisfying alternative. Adversity or suffering may have taught us certain important skills. Some writers have felt new appreciation for their lives after surviving a serious...

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

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.

As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.

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

You describe your Wonderful Night very well. That is, you describe the place & the people and the night and the feeling of it all, very well—but not the thing itself—the setting but not the...

Man nekad nav patikušas latviešu rakstības daudzās filoloģiskās palīgzīmes, kas samaitā burtu un lappuses grafisko izskatu, Tagad es šis ķekšus tieši ienīdu. Ja mūsu rakstības veidotājiem būtu vairāk estētiskās izjūtas, tie ķekšus būtu atvietojuši ar...

The movementOf the body isWhere poetryBegins

My stories are my children. Some are sweet infants that I coddle and care for. Others are old enough now, they need to damn well get a job!

You write what you know, and I know rock and roll.

I went on steadily trying to ‘find out how to’; but I wrote two or three novels without feeling that I had made much progress. It was not until I wrote “Ethan Frome” that I...

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

Build a strong foundation and you can reach even the most unthinkable heights.

Letters orchestrated into a song of words create the symphony of a novel.

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

I am a creator, writing like the wind, I carry the weight of a future world in the barrel of a pen, etching my characters into the paper with life giving ink so my dreams...

Write the ending first and then you’ll know before the opening sentence that it’s going to be a good book.

At it’s best,the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and...

I know I should be starting supper now — he’ll be mad if it’s TV dinners again — but I gotta see how this ends.” I gotta know will she live. I gotta know will...

I think of myth and magic as the hieroglyphics of the human psyche. They are a special language that circumvents conscious thought and goes straight to the subconscious. Non-fiction uses the medium of information. It...

Sometimes in fiction you had to mute reality in order to make it seem more believable.

When a person sets out to learn from others and not to teach others he becomes a true writer.

Kegiatan fisik dalam menulis fiksi bertolak belakang dengan hasil yang didapat. Kegiatan tersebut adalah duduk tegang dan jenuh sepanjang siang atau malam di depan meja dan mesin ketik, pada saat aku ingin berdiri dan pergi...

Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.

Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the...

The thing I’ve learned is that thinking is not writing.

And yet, for a writer of fiction, part of the heart remains that of a stranger, for what we are trying to do is to understand those others who are our fictional characters, somehow to...

Urusan pembaca adalah mengekalkan ingatan pada apa yang mereka sukai. Sebaliknya, urusan penulis adalah menghapus ingatan dari apa-apa yang sudah ia bikin. Ia hanya memusatkan perhatian pada bagaimana melahirkan karya sebaik-baiknya saat ini.

Inspiration do not come and cannot be found, it has to exist – somewhere, somehow. Do believe that what you are doing is the most important thing in this world, and do believe that your...

…there is a myth called objective reality – we think an impersonal world exists apart from us – it doesn’t – it needs us to be …

Time to turn some phrases and place them on these here pages.

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

we write every day, we fight every day, we think and scheme and dream a little dream every day. manuscripts pile up in the kitchen sink, run-on sentences dangle around our necks. we plant purple...

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....

Sometimes when I am writing, I feel as though I were not reliving the events I describe here, but rather living them. That there is no distance at all, and that I do not know...

And I’ve learned to hit the brakes at these kinds of stop signs rather than t-boning a tanker truck filled with 200 proof mediocrity.

When I write, it feels like there are two little creatures that sit on each of my shoulders. One whispers, “You can do this. You’ve got what it takes.” The other sounds like my mother-in-law.

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

And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves.

Let me tell you I’m dying.” Well of course I am. So are you.

No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But...

I know its totally senseless to attempt to write something ‘great’ in a time where people seem mostly concerned with bashing each other heads in, there’s only 1 bestseller a year that a 12 year...

My pen beats faster as I write with my heart

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

There is always, always, always something to write about.

Confession: I don’t want to be one of my characters. I’m mean to them sometimes. Really mean.

But in the wake of ‘Bullet,’ all the guys wanted to know was, ‘How’s it doing? How’s it selling?’ How to tell them I didn’t give a flying fuck how it was doing in the...

The process of self-invention is never-ending; writer, like children, are always growing into their gifts. (Susan Larson in a “Times-Picayune” book review.

(Dorothy) Dunnett is the master of the invisible, particularly in her later books. Where is this tension coming from? Why is this scene so agonizing? Why is this scene so emotional? Tension and emotion pervade...

Successful journals break the deadlock of introspective obsession