The Craft Quotes
Love the work: the grind, the dreaming, the distracted not-sleep, all of it. It’s the one thing in the job that will always be there, and the real pleasure in the profession. Everything else is luck.
Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!
Writing is like surfing on a wild sea, in the middle of a moonless night, in a hailstorm, on a deserted island.Yeah... that about sums it up.
What nobody tells you is that spending an entire day being paid to do something you love is sometimes a lot less fun than spending an entire day doing something you love for free.
When you feel that creeping self-doubt, acknowledge it. Write down your feelings in your journal... and then continue with your writing.
When you feel that creeping self-doubt, acknowledge it. Write down your feelings in your journal in your journal... and then continue with your writing.
Being a writer is not just about typing. It’s also about surviving the rollercoaster of the creative journey.
When you start out writing, your inner creative is just a little seedling with tiny leaves above the earth, peeping out into the air for the first time.
Open your soul and put it out there and dare the world to read it, ready to have them stomp on you and laugh, but ready to do it again the next day.
Never wait for your muse. Train him/her to show up to work when you do by pushing on. It's a dominant submission thing.
Allen Ginsberg instructs: "First thought, best thought." Oh, to have my every spontaneous thought count as poetry! No draft after draft like a draft
Writing is the neck muscle allowing us to see the important stuff in our periphery.
A writer will always be a writer. It's not a choice, it's a destiny.
Bulldogs are wonderful creatures to include in books. Besides their adorable bulldogishness, they provide the writer with a rare chance to use forms of the verb "snuffle.
The only 'ironclad rules' in writing fiction are the laws of physics and the principles of grammar, and even those can be bent.
I like to think I’ve written something worth reading when I cry the tears of the characters.
As you write your novel, you gradually start thinking like some of your characters in it. And at times the writer may lose himself completely in some character.
I believe that fiction with its untrammelled nature, speaks to no one, and by so doing, speaks to all.
Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.
I recommend writing standing up from time to time. It's easier to dance when you finish writing.
Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it.
Always remember that writing is an alliance between author and reader. With every line we put down on the page, we need to leave room for the reader's imagination and intellect.
For me, not knowing your theme until your finished is like using a scalpel to turn a kangaroo into Miss Universe – there will be a lot of deep cuts, and there’s a high chance it won’t work.
Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.
Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.
You don’t create a diamond by rubbing it with fluffy bunny slippers. You need to apply pressure and heat. There are enough air-headed cheerleaders out there. We need more drill sergeants.
I craft most of my own tragedies without ever having even the remotest understanding that it is I myself who have done the crafting.
A clever trick does not a concept make.
You are an author! You will be a published author. Take pride in that, and present only your best work. Then, continue to improve, so your best gets even better.
On Writing: "A multitude of improbabilities can be forgiven as long as enough plausibility has been established.
I tell everyone who asks me about writing...almost everyone has an idea for a book, and some even have a great ending, but it's that 290 or so pages in between that are tough!
