Writing is like making love, editing is like giving your great grandfather a sponge bath.
Je choisis des mots simples et concrets... J'essaie de faire des phrases courtes et j'évite les inversions autant que possible. Je ne mets pas un mot très bref à côté d'un mot de plusieurs syllables... Si un mot finit par une consonne, je lui tr...
You don't teach a person how to write as much as you teach that person how to survive the writing process.
To have output you must have input. It helps to go on a period of creative nourishment, or dolce far niente, clearing the brain. Go to bed with the cat, some flouffy pillows, tea and a book which could not in any sense be called improving. Read for f...
I think ‘slow writing’ is the answer when the feeling of burn out threatens, something akin to the ‘slow food’ movement. Anxiety and panic are counterproductive to the creative process.
There's one thing your writing must have to be any good at all. It must have you. Your soul, your self, your heart, your guts, your voice -- you must be on that page. In the end, you can't make the magic happen for your reader. You can only allow the...
Writing- the profession in which you stare at a computer screen, stare out the window, type a few words, then curse repeatedly.
I write because I must. It's not a choice or a pastime, it's an unyeilding calling and my passion.
Just tell the truth, and they'll accuse you of writing black humor.
Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.
I'm an aspiring writer.' I hate that phrase. You're either a writer or you're not.
It's the first thing I tell my students: If you could understand, really understand, that no one to read your work, then your writing would improve vastly by the time we meet in this classroom again.
My books are mine, and yet they are alien to me--as a child belongs to a parent and yet has a life of its own. I can guide and hope and nudge my characters this and that way, but in the end, they become what they become. I don't always like what they...
What is a writer? A writer is a magician who can create a masterpiece With a wave of a pencil A writer has the key to a new world Capturing readers and taking them on a roller coaster ride away from reality But a writer can be a commanding tyrant Or ...
If the voices in your head make you cry, you're a lunatic. Put their words on paper, and you're a writer.
Writing is like baking cupcakes, you're trying to make something from the raw. Like with cupcakes it's flour and eggs and stuff, and with books it's ideas and words. The end result is the same though, you want people to eat them up.
I edit my own stories to death. They eventually run and hide from me.
Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.
What is the best way to write? Each of us has to discover her own way by writing. Writing teaches writing. No one can tell you your own secret.
Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.
Creative exhaustion is first cousin to writer’s block. First off, I try to accept that when it hits, I am not wasting time, but preparing myself to return to work. I blog more. I do something different, like answering this question. If I can’t fo...
