In retrospect, this seems to summarize all the insanity of that time. Guy is standing on top of a burning building. Helicopter arrives, hovers, drops a rope ladder. the man leaning out of the helicopter's door shouts. Guy on top of burning building r...
If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.
In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.
Where do storytellers find the wisdom to discover their own stories? From no place more mysterious than their own hearts.
I don't think that anyone outside Paris can understand love and murder as we do. But Emile loves Paris, and loving Paris is a murderous education. ("Anthropology: What Is Lost In Rotation")
You might say as you tirelessly said of my stories, at least of the adjectives, that I should render the evidence, not render the verdict... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read")
I'll use the blood from my spilling heart to write the words that were never able to slip out of my mouth, so you can see how much you've broken me into a perpetual state of melancholy.
In sum, one of the primary things I learned was how to kill time. I learned also to wish away my life. I learned to give myself away.
Writing is both an act of power and surrender. Passion and discovery. It is a tug at your soul that continues to pull you forward, even as you go kicking and screaming.” (p.18)
Guttenberg didn’t write the Bible—he just printed it. Gideon didn’t write the Bible—he just placed it into every nightstand in every hotel. And Orafoura doesn’t appear in the Bible—though he may have disappeared into it.
Friends and family do not believe you write fiction. They truly believe that every word you write is either autobiographical or based on them. I once had a character say that she never wanted to be invited to another children's birthday party, and I ...
When I started writing a business column 15 years ago, I knew I'd found the perfect job for myself. As a columnist I could pick my own topic, do my own analysis, say what I wanted to say and attribute it to myself. Best of all, I could write in my ow...
When I see somebody being mistreated, my eyes tear up and I want to stop it. And I believe that the best thing I can do is to write about it, because if I insert myself into the equation it doesn't really do much good, but if I write about it I think...
All my books take a long time to research. I spend several months researching before I start writing, and in the middle of writing I often have to stop and look up stuff. At my local library, I am one of the best customers! The research takes several...
Fantasy is my favorite genre for reading and writing. We have more options than anyone else, and the best props and special effects. That means if you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can d...
I think no one but me has the right to write about my life as I want to write it in a particular way. I don't think any other person will be able to tell the story of my life like how I have approached it. It works best when it's written by someone w...
I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.
Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 dra...
When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to sa...
Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.
It was relatively easy to write 'The Cave of Lost Souls', though, because it came to me one night in a dream. I remember waking up and having this idea for a complete story - from start to finish - in my head, so I jotted it down, then later began wr...
