“Write often. . . .Then, learn to let go. Let go of old drafts that aren’t going anywhere, or scenes that don’t work. Don’t spend months tweaking a fundamentally flawed project when you can move on to the wonderful new projects that are percolating in your head. The ‘you must start what you finish’ attitude—although admirable—can actually be a pitfall, because it prevents you from taking a necessary course correction when you need it.” ~ Leslie Lutz
“My writing is a process of rewriting, of going back and changing and filling in. in the rewriting process you discover what’s going on, and you go back and bring it up to that point.” ~ Joan Didion
“It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.”
~ Doris Lessing
“Run your own race. Don’t worry about how fast someone else writes, how much another author makes, how many followers another author has. Write what makes you excited, and the enthusiasm will come through on the page.”
~ Christina Lauren
“Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.”
“Don’t give up, and don’t lose your stubborn belief that you have a story worth telling. I’ve had so many people tell me over so many years that I didn’t have the qualities needed to be a writer. All of my writer friends and I have one thing in common: We didn’t listen to the naysayers. We kept writing. And eventually we have all been published.” ~ Devi S. Laskar
“To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.”
~ Ayn Rand
“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that’s the only way you can do anything really good.”
“Position yourself to succeed by doing the other things in your life that rejuvenate you. You can create little islands of time away from your novel that will help preserve your balance. Exhaustion will affect both your writing’s quality and your productivity.”
“I don’t always know what’s going to go on in terms of the mood of the story. Sometimes I start with the mood, but sometimes I just try to work toward discovering it. But I do think often there’s a mood or unsettling quality, in which the reality of the world seems to be taken away, that I really love, and it’s something that I almost always unconsciously move toward.” ~ Brian Evenson
