Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.
Each thing you add to your story is a drop of paint falling into clear water; it spreads through and colors everything.
The beautiful unruliness of literature is what makes it so much fun to wander through: you read Jane Austen and you say, oh, that is IT. And then you turn around and read Sterne, and you say, Man, that is IT. And then you wander across a century or s...
Never say you can't be a writer or a script writer, remember how well, characters in your dreams said their dialogues.
We will need to find people who will provide a safe writing space for us, where criticism comes late and love and delight come early. —from Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing
The only 'ironclad rules' in writing fiction are the laws of physics and the principles of grammar, and even those can be bent.
. . . But then you will want to put that {publication} behind you right away. You will want to recover the obscurity you swim best through. You've got eternal youth there. You'll never be satisfied. If you get lucky, it will be a darkness so pure it ...
It's not pain. It's raw material.
We’re at this really unique time, I think, in trans representation in popular culture where homelessness, depression, mental health issues, instability-in-general are still so very real and need to be talked about, but we’re aware that they’ve ...
Trust your instincts. Do not confuse ego with instinct. Ego has to be set aside if you want to improve, and we should always want to improve. There is no glass ceiling on being better.
I recommend writing standing up from time to time. It's easier to dance when you finish writing.
You gotta dig through the shit to get to the gold.
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.
Words are the bones. Writing is the lungs. Reading is like breathing.
A dear and long-time friend,... asked me, "Jack, how long does it usually take you to write a book?" I replied, "Of course it depends on the project and its requirements, each book has its own rules. But for a statement to the world at large, once I'...
Don't over edit. Don't second-guess yourself, or your ideas. Just write. Write every day, and keep at it. Don't get discouraged with the rejections. Tape them up on your office wall, to remind you of all the hard work you put in when you finally star...
The paradox of writing is that you’re trying to use words to express what words can’t express.
Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!
A good writer reveals beauty in the mundane and truth in tragedy. Words are a tool; a currency of the mind, and the best writers weave passages into our hearts that our bones remember.
In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a case. But who would accept such a definiti...
