Spend Some Time Living Before You Start Writing

Spend some time living before you start writing. What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, “Write what you know.” It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.

ANNIE PROULX

Writing Is Hard for Every Last One of Us

Writing is hard for every last one of us…. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

CHERYL STRAYED

Heinlein's Rules for Writers

1. You must write.

2. You must finish what you write.

3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.

4. You must put the work on the market.

5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

You Want To Read A Book With Blood

I’ve always fought off becoming a beloved writer.... Once you get to be at a certain level of mastery, you get to be beloved. That’s something that I don’t really care about. Beloved author? Why is that important for me to become? It’s not. You want to read a book with blood. A lot of it.

LOUISE ERDRICH

Writing A Novel Is Like Living In A House Full Of Ghosts

Writing a novel is like living in a house full of ghosts — even when you ignore them, they’re still there, waiting to talk to you. They have all the time in the world. No matter how much you avoid them, the time comes when you have to confront them. Hear them out. See what they have to say. Over time, their features become clearer, their voices stronger, their histories richer, their lives fuller.

LAILA LALAMI

You Become A Character

I just give the illusion of exposing myself, but really, I'm not exposed at all. There's a real me that's inside my diary, and then there's a character of me. Whenever you write about yourself, real people live in the world, and characters live on the page, and you become a character.

DAVID SEDARIS

A Story Has No Beginning Or End

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

GRAHAM GREENE 

Writers Read

Just as composers go to concerts and artists visit galleries, writers read. You will learn, in the most enjoyable way, more about style and language from reading good literature than you will ever acquire from workshops and how-to books.

JUDITH BARRINGTON

The Plump Comforts of a Story

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story.

DIANE SETTERFIELD

Words Deserve Respect

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

TOM STOPPARD