Avoid the Passive Voice Whenever Possible

Avoid the passive voice whenever possible. University term papers bleed with the passive voice. It seems to be the accepted style of Academia. Dump it.

RITA MAE BROWN

It's Such A Tricky Thing, Being A Screenwriter

It’s such a tricky thing, being a screenwriter, a strange combination of talents. You have to have the instincts to want to express yourself like any writer, but at the same time you have to have a very powerful collaborative instinct.

BO GOLDMAN

Novels Are Concealed Autobiography

In one deep sense, novels are concealed autobiography. I don’t mean that you are telling facts about yourself, but you are trying to find out what you really think or who you are.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

A Writer Tries to Make Sense of Life

People make the mistake of regarding commitment as something solely political. A writer is committed to trying to make sense of life. It's a search. So there is that commitment first of all: the commitment to the honesty and determination to go as deeply into things as possible, and to dredge up what little bit of truth you with your talent can then express.

NADINE GORDIMER

The Subject of Drama is The Truth

The subject of drama is The Truth. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH —which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied—prevails. And that is how we know the drama is done.

DAVID MAMET

Writing Is Like Sculpture

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.

ELIE WIESEL

Writers Find Their Own Answers

My experience with trying to help people to write has been limited but extremely intensive. I have done everything from giving would-be writers money to live on to plotting and rewriting their stories for them, and so far I have found it all to be a waste. The people whom God or nature intended to be writers find their own answers, and those who have to ask are impossible to help. They are merely people who want to be writers.

RAYMOND CHANDLER

Literature and Politics Are Mutually Exclusive

Literature and politics are mutually exclusive. A writer is someone who works alone, who needs total independence. A politician is someone who is totally dependent, who has to make all kinds of concessions, the very thing a writer can't do.

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

Novels Translate Desire Into Prose

I have never thought writing novels was hard work. Hard work was commercial fishing out of New Bedford or Gloucester or driving a 16-wheel truck. Novels have more to do with desire—translating desire into prose—and a temperament that accepts concentration over the long haul, meaning the ability to sit alone in one place day by day.

WARD JUST

You Write What You Write

All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself—though, thank God I had never committed them to paper—I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.

JAMAICA KINCAID