“For me, writing is an experience. It’s an exercise in which I want to discover myself by taking my characters to the edges of human experience, to the edges of themselves and then, asking certain questions – about love, what does it mean to love? What’s beauty? What is true beauty?”
~ Ted Dekker
mystery
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ To Outline or Not Outline
“I do not outline. There are writers I know and count as my friends who certainly do it the other way but for me part of the adventure is not knowing how it’s going to turn out.”
~ Joyce Maynard
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Key to Starting a Novel
“Whenever I start a novel, I’m always looking for two things: a bit of science that makes me go ‘what if?’ and a piece of history that ends in a question mark.” ~ James Rollins
What are you looking for when you begin?
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Write About What You Know
“I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.” ~ Lincoln Child
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Helpful Tip if You’re Stuck
“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ What is a Good Short Story?
“A good short story asks a question that can’t be answered in simple terms. And even if we come up with some understanding, years later, while glancing out of a window, the story still has the potential to return, to alter right there in our mind and change everything.” ~ Walter Mosley
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Who Are You Trying to Please?
“The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.”
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Starting Place for Figuring out the Plot
“I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.”
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ Do You Hear the Music in Your Words?
“Because music is a language unto itself, when I’m writing, I need silence. I need to hear the music and the rhythms of the words inside my thoughts.” ~ Marianne Wiggins
✒️ Writers’ Wisdom ~ A Reason for Writing
“I think we often write because we feel a loneliness, and people read for the same reason, and then they come away feeling a little less lonely.” ~ Amy Tan
