I wanted not the momentary suspense but the whole world to which it belonged.

To be a decent writer you must have both empathy and imagination. While these attributes aid your art, they can plague your soul. You don’t simply suffer your own sadness, experience your own longing and...

murder your darlings

Great writers wield their words like a weapon; a double-edged sword to strike their readers with truth where they least expect it. -Matthew D. Forgenti

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

I said I want my eggs scrambled not destroyed.”At the explosion of such a sequence from our green young lips, we’d rashly scribble it on the wall of our apartment with a filthy wax pencil,...

A place that proves if you get enough talented people in a room, one or two are bound to offer some helpful advice. Kind if like monkeys with typewriters.

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.

Fiction is true. It doesn’t have to factual to be true.

I am developing new coping mechanisms for lost words and lost negatives, as here for instance: compensate by describing the episode instead. When something is lost, redirect energy, follow the derivé, the chance and flow...

A blank piece of paper and a pen or a pencil is always all ears.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I...

The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and...

In such troubled times, we must remember the value writers have—the value of inventing new language to keep pace with the rapidly transforming world around us.

Why do I keep evading my work? Is it because I’m afraid of being confronted by my lack of abilities?

When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to...

Turning a manuscript into a book is easy; getting the manuscript ready to become a book is hard.

I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you...

Get your story written, you always have the second and third draft to fix things like tense, 1st vs 3rd person, the exact right word, etc.

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never...

Err on the side of awesome.

There’s more to the erotic life than explicitness.

Basically, that’s why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

I think… the most brilliant thing about being a writer,is that if you don’t like the way the world is, you can create your own.

Sound is so important to creative writing. Think of the sounds you hear that you include and the similes you use to describe what things sound like. ‘As she walked up the alley, her polyester...

I would write my tears, weeping out my pain – I would empty my veins for ink.

I read a lot. And both of my parents, I think, would have wanted to be writers. It’s funny how one ends up doing the things that-that parents-perhaps, the dreams that parents couldn’t fulfill. I...

She would keep playing the role of the winner as long as the audience believed her.

I want to assure you with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time, – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you...

We spend our lives waiting for our book and it never comes.

Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poets say what they think they should feel.

Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

First drafts don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be written.

The ink in your pen never reshapes your thoughts, you must replace the ink before the ink can be inked properly.

My mother, who is a pianist and a fine artist, purchased a piano for me. Twice. This was back when I was a small girl. Pianos, of course, came complete with the quintessential piano teacher...

Some writers aren’t writers, they are mere escapees’ and refugees’ on an exile from the jungle of thoughts.

The keeping of lists was for November an exercise kin to repeating of a rosary. She considered it neither obsessive nor compulsive, but a ritual, an essential ordering of the world into tall, thin jars...

And so I’ve written everything down, too afraid of my demons and what they may say, the doubt that eats at me from the inside. Too afraid that I’ll forget and it’ll all be a...

Science fiction is a dialogue, a tennis match, in which the Idea is volleyed from one side of the net to the other. Ridiculous to say that someone ‘stole’ an idea: no, no, a thousand...

Os poetas vão ficar no desemprego, em breve, muito em breve.Os algoritmos sem erro, perfeitos de pesadelo, escreverão melhor.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world–they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this one.

It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of...

At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously....

Most science fiction seemed to be written for people who already liked science fiction; I wanted to write stories for anyone, anywhere, living at any time in the history of the world.

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need...

Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn’t necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of...

Sometimes, when it’s going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words...

I can’t protect you from the stars, but I can tell you stories that may help at night when they are staring at you.

But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade after decade bright young men and women...

The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the...