voice

Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don’t know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you’d mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place. Trust your demon. ~ Roger Zelazny

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way. ~ Ray Bradbury

“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut 

Good authors mature over time: it does take awhile. ~ Richard K. Morgan

“Writing can be a bit like unfolding something…Slowly, the writer reveals what’s happening. But that’s only half of what’s going on. Writers are very cunning people who are not only unfolding and revealing. Just like conjurors and magicians, they are hiding stuff too.” ~ Michael Rosen

Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel.

~ Michael Morpurgo 

“The best tip for writing is just to write; to sit down and write, to begin doing it and not to be scared by the blank page.” David Almond

“Stories twist and turn and grow and meet and give birth to other stories. Here and there, one story touches another, and a familiar character, sometimes the hero, walks over the bridge from one story into another.” ~ Marcus Sedgwick

“Don’t be afraid of writing rubbish. It’s very easy to become hypnotized by an empty page or screen. It’s tempting to abandon a half-finished work because you can’t make it perfect. I hereby give you permission to write things that aren’t perfect, make mistakes, try things that don’t work, experiment with styles you’re not used to and generally throw words around. You’ll learn much faster that way.” ~ Frances Hardings

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character — the one whose view best brings the scene to life — I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight. ~ Elmore Leonard