The process of self-invention is never-ending; writer, like children, are always growing into their gifts. (Susan Larson in a "Times-Picayune" book review.
What I like about the job of being a novelist, and at the same time what I find so exhausting about it, is that it's the closest thing to being God you're ever going to get. All the decisions are yours. You decide when the sun comes up. You decide who gets to fall in love and who gets hit by a car. You have to make all the trees and all the leaves and then sew the leaves onto the trees. You make the entire world.
The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life
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What I like about the job of being a novelist, and at the same time what I find so exhausting about it, is that it's the closest thing to being God you're ever going to get. All the decisions are yours. You decide when the sun comes up. You decide who gets to fall in love and who gets hit by a car. You have to make all the trees and all the leaves and then sew the leaves onto the trees. You make the entire world.
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Write the ending first and then you'll know before the opening sentence that it's going to be a good book.
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Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.
Don't think too much. There'll be time to think later. Analysis won't help. You're chiseling now. You're passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There's something there. It isn't your business yet to know whether it's going to be prize-worthy someday, or whether it will gather dust in a drawer. Now you've carved the tree. You've chiseled the marbled. You've begun.
When a solid first draft of an original tale is complete...you feel as if you could do anything.