Periodically, thoughts about writing will be posted here, some of which will be quotes from a few of my author-heroes.
A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here. Quentin Tarantino
To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. Virginia Woolf
I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter. James Michener
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. William Faulkner
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers. Isaac Asimov
You must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image, – mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart, the most remote recesses of your brain, – you must search them for the image, for the glamour, for the right expression. And you must do it sincerely, at any cost: you must do it so that at the end of your day’s work you should feel exhausted, emptied of every sensation and every thought, with a blank mind and an aching heart, with the notion that there is nothing, – nothing left in you. Joseph Conrad
A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat. Rex Stout
I think new writers are too worried that it has all been said before. Sure it has, but not by you. Asha Dornfest
Being a reader lets you live a thousand different lives all over the world, but being a writer lets you create those lives and fulfill them, manipulate them, or destroy them as you laugh maniacally over your keyboard.
I am by nature a dealer in words, and words are the most powerful drug known to humanity. Rudyard Kipling
Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works. Virginia Woolf
It’s your story, Babe. Feel free to hit ’em with a plot twist whenever you want. Unknown
Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone’s advice about changing it. They just don’t know. Raymond Chandler
If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen. Dashiell Hammett
You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
– Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), in a letter to Orion Clemens, 23 March, 1878
Writers turn dreams into print. James Michener
Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic. Raymond Chandler
You usually can tell when a writer is going downhill by the size of his liquor bill. James M. Cain
I believe it is the inability of beginning writers to achieve at least a certain degree of detachment from their writing that defeats so many of them before they even get started. Without this distancing, any criticism of your writing will seem devastating, even incapacitating, whereas with the proper amount of detachment it will seem merely cruel and unusual punishment. Patrick F. McManus, in The Deer on a Bicycle: Excursions Into the Writing of Humor
It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open. Herman Melville
Dear Editor: It’s a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check. Erle Stanley Gardner, who also published under numerous pseudonyms, including A.A. Fair, Kyle Corning, Charles M. Green, Carleton Kendrake, Charles J. Kenny, Les Tillray, and Robert Parr.
Anachronisms can creep into a story when writing about earlier time periods. Though some have argued these were deliberate, even Shakespeare fell into this trap, such as when he referenced a striking clock in Julius Caesar or when, in Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra invited her servant Charmain to play billiards. I read a short story a number of years ago which took place in 1932 and wherein two characters were discussing a third who’d disappeared. One of the men told the other the absent fellow had “fallen off the radar.” The concept of radar was the subject of secret experiments from 1934 to 1939. The word “radar” was coined by Signal Corps in 1939. As readers of this website soon come to know, my favorite time period to write about is the 1930s. I’m very careful about the time period of the words I use.
A lot of novelists start late-Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you’re young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can’t be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don’t know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter. James M. Cain
When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it’s good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You’re not likely ever to get all these things, and you’re not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don’t, but that is — and should be — your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling. Dashiell Hammett
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. James Michener
The book to read is not the one that thinks for you but the one which makes you think. Harper Lee
In the spirit of noir literature: English doesn’t borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them out with a sap, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? George Orwell
