writer’s block

“As for suspense, I like to write books that draw you into the hero’s plight from the opening pages, where people put their lives on the line for something – a belief, a family member, the truth.”

“Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?”

~ Raymond Carver

“The main reason for rewriting is not to achieve a smooth surface, but to discover the inner truth of your characters.”

“Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.”

“If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.”

~ Ray Bradbury

“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.”

“A plot begins when somebody has something to hide.”

“A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.z’

“Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone’s advice about changing it. They just don’t know.”

“I never know what’s going to happen in a novel. I don’t have a plan or an outline.”