Write from the soul, not from some notion about what you think the marketplace wants.The market is fickle; the soul is eternal'.
Our life is a blank book and we are the authors......... Write and shape your story as much as the mind can imagine it
I always saw songwriting as the top of the heap. No matter what else you were going to do creatively - and there were a lot of choices - writing songs was king.
I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.
I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.
'Oscar Wao' for example cohered in a period of terrible distress. All the novels that I wanted to write were not happening.
'Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.
We live in a moment and a culture when reading is really endangered. There's simply no way to write well, though, if you're not reading well.
One area I have a huge amount of trouble in is writing about myself. I get a heavy, almost depressed feeling.
I usually write in my underwear, with a space heater running full blast, and three dogs sleeping at me feet.
If we can't write diversity into sci-fi, then what's the point? You don't create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.
I haven’t had writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly.
In my opinion, it is easier to avoid iambic rhythms, when writing in syllabics, if you create a line or pattern of lines using odd numbers of syllables.
I've never had any interest at all in being a journalist or writing some sort of historically accurate autobiography.
There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
Hmmm. I think a lot of people can write poems that are howls of anguish. I think I've probably written such things and then torn them up.
I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership.
For my stand-up, I always have my notebook with me and if something strikes me, I'll write it down.
While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed.
Read a lot. Read broadly... Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored... Write a lot.
I hate violence, and I didn't plan to write horror; it just poured out of me.
