story line

“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs 

“If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be.”

~ Hilary Mantel

“The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can’t be spoken in words alone. At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.”

~ Alan Garner

“All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.”

~ Lloyd Alexander

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”

~ Enid Bagnold

“The progress of any writer is marked by those moments when he manages to outwit his own inner police system.”

~ Ted Hughes

“I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still.”

~ Sylvia Plath

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

~ Ernest Hemingway

“A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.”

~ Alain de Botton

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

~ Ernest Hemingway