Writing Craft Quotes - Page 2

Humility is an essential quality in writers who want to write well.

... yes I speak a different language - the dark fire of poetry - it flutters and gutters in tune with the mood...

What you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.

Pursue knowledge as though it is your life-blood, then you will know greatness!

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay

I don’t just want a gripping story line. I shoot for the three dimensional literary Braille to a silent Scorsese movie

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

Writing is a lifelong disease. Once contracted, the only prescription is to write constantly in whatever form to express your condition, in whatever construction to carry your words beyond you.

I realized that my life of late had consisted of far too much dialogue and not enough exposition. I imagined an angry, bespectacled English teacher slashing his pen through the transcript of my life, wondering how someone could possibly say so much and think so little.

And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves.

Bye-bye. Nice knowing you. But if you are waiting for that perfect idea to strike like lightning during a dust storm (I live in New Mexico), you could be waiting a long time. Ideas are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I can’t walk to the bathroom without being hit with another idea. It’s what you DO with that idea that matters. Here is your mantra: BICHOK, BICHOK, BICHOKTranslation: Butt in chair, hands on keys. Just write. Every stinking day.

Characters begin as your children and become your teachers.

There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.

Writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.

Good or bad, words have an impact on each of us. As a writer, I can only hope that the effects my words have on others are more often good than bad.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page.