Given the initial talent … writing is largely a matter of application and hard work, of writing and rewriting endlessly, until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. For me, that usually means many, many revisions. ~ Rachel Carson
writing fiction
Writer’s Wisdom ~ William Faulkner
Read, read, read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window. ~ William Faulkner
Writer’s Wisdom ~ Margaret Atwood
Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page. ~ Margaret Atwood
Writing Wisdom ~ Somerset Maugham
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
– Somerset Maugham
Writer’s Wisdom ~ Alice Hoffman
An insightful, experienced oncologist told me that cancer need not be a person’s whole book, only a chapter. Still, novelists know that some chapters inform all others. These are the chapters of your life that wallop you and teach you and bring you to tears, that invite you to step to the other side of the curtain, the one that divides those of us who must face our destiny sooner rather than later. ~ Alice Hoffman
Source: NY Times
Writing Wisdom ~ Carl Hiaasen
Every writer scrounges for inspiration in different places, and there’s no shame in raiding the headlines. It’s necessary, in fact, when attempting contemporary satire. Sharp-edged humor relies on topical reference points. ~ Carl Hiaasen
Source: NY Times
Writer’s Wisdom ~ Sue Miller
Surely the writer’s job is to make relevant the world she wishes to write about. How? By writing well and carefully and powerfully. By using humor, as Cheever did; or violence, as O’Connor did; or rue, as Chekhov did, to make the territory of her imagination compelling and somehow universal. And that holds true whether the territory of the imagination is close to the literal truth of her life or far from it. ~ Sue Miller
Source: NY Times
Mark Twain’s Writing Advice #6 of 10
The more you explain it, the less I understand it. ~ Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s Writing Advice #5 of 10
If I had more time, it would have been shorter. ~ Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s Writing Advice #4 of 10
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. ~ Mark Twain
