Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.
Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.
Just keep writing, and try to finish that novel. Remember, all authors started exactly where you are right now; the only difference between a published author and a non-published one is that the published author never stopped writing.
People often think that reporters write their own headlines. In fact, they almost never do. The people who do write headlines are the copy editors who are the front and last lines of quality-checking in a newspaper before it goes to print.
You write a book, and after 50 pages you think it's about one thing, and then you write another hundred and you realize it's about something else, and then by the time you're done, you can look back and say, 'Oh, this is what it's about.'
Fred Friendly: Did you write your closing piece? Edward R. Murrow: It's Shakespeare. Fred Friendly: Uh-huh. Write your closing piece.
A poet can feel free, in my estimation, to write a poem for himself. Or a painter can paint a painting for himself. You can write a short story for yourself. But for me, comedy by its nature is communal. If other people don't get it, I'm not sure why...
If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction. You can write like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison as much as you want.
I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.
It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.
Real people conceive originality then think, write but never read of others’ posts to copy to follow and the copycats follow exactly the opposite direction i.e. read of others' posts, write but never think and conceive originality.
Early on, after gay liberation, there was an almost Stalinist pressure from gay critics and even gay readers to write about positive role models. We were never supposed to write negative things about gays, or else we were seen as collaborating with t...
One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or e...
Dedication. DEDICATION. That is the only way to become a writer. Write every day. Write until your fingers bleed, your eyes bleed, your soul bleeds. From that blood, stories are born. It's worth it.
Don’t write what you know—what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you—and interests you deeply—and your readers will catch fire at your words.
Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do no...
It's a job. When I'm writing I'm going to do it five to six days a week and I'm going to work for four to six hours a day. There's no magic writing fairy. It's just hard work.
Nu shu means women's writing. And it was a secret writing system that was invented by women, used by women and kept a secret by women in one very remote county in China for a thousand years. It's the only language that was invented and used by women ...
Apples are kissing other apples. Gray cats are kissing other gray cats. Trees are kissing trees. You and I are not kissing. We work in an office together. We are both married to other people. It is okay because we only have ideas, you and I, about wh...
...I looked out the window at walls of moonlit cloud rising beside us as though we we were at the bottom of some, gray and ivory canyon, hung above the moon-smashed sea... But, with whatever hindsight, I suppose the reason that I want to close on a c...
In my dream I woke up to realize I was tired and needed to go to sleep. Then I slowly remembered that I was asleep, but that I needed to wake up and write this down. Blah.
