Fall makes me think that if I fail horribly at this art thing, and then fail horribly with this writing thing, I’ll go run a pumpkin patch.

I’m a miner, and I’m always dirty, because I’m constantly digging. Am I shoveling for gold? Hardly. I’m unearthing this hearty land searching for the next great American novel. If I dig deep enough, I’m...

While I was trying to write, I was trying to grow.

In writing, you must kill all your darlings.

Your writing can be chosen by one publisher and hated by all readers, or it can be rejected by one publisher and loved by all readers. Most of the time it’s somewhere in between, but...

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....

When I get tired of new clunky writing, I resort to old fashioned story tellers, like Wilkie Collins.

Conversations.” Of course, it’s all talk at this point.

Someone said that once a family producers a writer, that’s the end of the family.

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.

I felt like poisoning a monk.

My ignorance is essential. I do not write what I know but what I need to know.

Remove the comma, replace the comma, remove the comma, replace the comma…

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning...

Another time, talking about his books, the baroness confessed that she had never bothered to read any of them, because she hardly ever read ‘difficult’ or ‘dark’ novels like the ones he wrote. With the...

I’m a husband, a father of two, a full-time teacher, and so my writing process mostly involves sitting down and writing, any chance I get, anywhere I am, for as long as life will let...

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

If the storytellers told it true, all stories would end in death.

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

Even in the hottest fire there’s a bit of water. my The Opposite Of Magic.

So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself;...

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.”[Writer’s Digest, September 1961]

Never stop doing your best just because one person doesn’t give you credit.

Write about a terrible experience until you find value in having gone through it. Then you will appreciate every dark hour.

Believe in your characters with all your heart, & they will believe in you. Only then will they trust you enough to reveal themselves. -RCSJR

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar.

If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won’t save it.

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,...

…he was after all, a novelist…and a novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into...

the intensityin your eyesburns my penas i write.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.

I have said that His Dark Materials is not fantasy but stark realism, and my reason for this is to emphasise what I think is an important aspect of the story, namely the fact that...

You like to write. It’s the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.

The words get easier the moment you stop fearing them.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” What inspires you?

Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores...

Writing with a biro is the emotional equivalent of giving your loved one a plastic rose on Valentine’s Day.

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...

In my craft or sullen artExercised in the still nightWhen only the moon ragesAnd the lovers lie abedWith all their griefs in their arms,I labour by singing lightNot for ambition or breadOr the strut and...

One of Scotland’s most important cultural exports – stories.

Every scene should be able to answer three questions: “Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now?

The vigor I lacked for physical activities became incandescent when, pen in hand, I filled those pages with invented stories. Sometimes they were intimately about me – family tales, parental exploits – sometimes they became...

The funny thing about writing is that whether you’re doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That’s actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.

Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it’s flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I began a new story. My characters are...

The only thing you should have to do is find work you love to do. And I can’t imagine living without having loved a person. A man, in my case. It could be a woman,...

Do you suffer when you write? I don’t at all. Suffer like a bastard when don’t write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and...

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.

Do you think you’re not ‘ready’ to start that big story idea/project you’ve been thinking about forever?Jump in. Write anyway. The only way to make the impossible a reality is to take a leap of...