quotations about writing
Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.
JACK LONDON
"Getting Into Print", Editor magazine, 1903
Fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get into the water before dawn, wearing a little protective gear, then you stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself. This is not to say you are passive. You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. You have the desire to blow the duck apart for reasons that are entirely your own. But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to have happen, but what happens. You have to write the story you find in the circumstances you've created, because more often than not the ducks don't show up. The hunters in the next blind begin to argue, and you realize they're in love. You see a snake swimming in your direction. Your dog begins to shiver and whine, and you start to think about this gun that belonged to your father. By the time you get out of the marsh, you will have written a novel so devoid of ducks it will shock you.
ANN PATCHETT
What Now?
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
EDWARD ALBEE
Saturday Review, May 4, 1966
He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.
WASHINGTON IRVING
introduction, Tales of a Traveler
I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.
TANITH LEE
The Book of the Damned
I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 1, 2008
I think it is essential to promote your work, since there are over 100,000 books published each year, and readers can fall in love with books they've never heard about.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
interview, The Writer's Life
I try to write every day. I used to try to write four times a day, minimum of three sentences each time. It doesn't sound like much but it's kinda like the hare and the tortoise. If you try that several times a day you're going to do more than three sentences, one of them is going to catch on. You're going to say "Oh boy!" and then you just write. You fill up the page and the next page. But you have a certain minimum so that at the end of the day, you can say "Hey I wrote four times today, three sentences, a dozen sentences. Each sentence is maybe twenty word long. That's 240 words which is a page of copy, so at least I didn't goof off completely today. I got a page for my efforts and tomorrow it might be easier because I've moved as far as I have."
ROGER ZELAZNY
interview, Phlogiston, 1995
In my view, if you write every day you're a certified graphomaniac, you're OCD, you're addicted to the physical act and not the real, spiritual one.
ROSEMARY JENKINSON
"Writing is not about youth but about spark", Irish Times, March 27, 2017
My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.
CHINA MIÉVILLE
The Guardian, September 20, 2012
Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.
PHILIP ROTH
attributed, Literary Agents: How to Get & Work With the Right One For You
Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our own poor scratched-over pages. For these we can hold up to life. That is, we are born with a mind and heart to hold each page up to, and to ask: is it valid?
EUDORA WELTY
On Writing
Some people talk to themselves, and some people write, and somehow society has decided that one gets committed and one gets a paycheck.
BOB LONSBERRY
official website
Sometimes I think that my best writing comes from exposing my fears and vulnerabilities and hoping that nobody notices it's about me.
VICTORIA LAURIE
Twitter post, October 13, 2014
The factors controlling a writer's popularity are as mysterious and ultimately as unknowable as the number of stars in the sky.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
interview, SF Site, April 2001
The only characters I've made to resemble real people have been grotesques.
GLEN COOK
interview, SF Site, September 2005
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living -- cook books and detective stories.
REX STOUT
Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout