writing-craft

I can't wait to get back to writing today so I can see what happens next Kim Cormack

Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn't much of a theory, but it was all Ruth could truly commit herself to at the moment. It was time to retire that old lecture, and her penance was to endure the compliments of her former credo.

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

[G]reat stories communicate simple truths that reflect the poetic dimensions of the human soul. Not only do powerful characters help us understand our lives, their stories reflect our core values as human beings.

I recommend writing standing up from time to time. It's easier to dance when you finish writing.

Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it.

If you don__ make time for writing, writing won__ make time for you.

The more time you can put between you and your manuscript, the more fresh your eyes become and the more mistakes you__l catch. Let a chapter rest for a day, you__l see ways to improve it. Let your completed book rest a month or more and you__l see stuff that__ long or that you want to skip. Read it out loud to get rid of awkward phrases and listen to your critique partners if they are good.

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and, having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

Fiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination.

All morning I lay down sentences, erase them, and try new ones. Soon enough, when things go well, the world around me dwindles: the sky out the window, the furious calm of the big umbrella pine ten feet away, the smell of dust falling onto the hot bulb in the lamp. That's the miracle of writing, the place you try to find--when the room, your body, and even time itself cooperate in a vanishing act.

Don't be afraid to get off the internet, the answers aren't all there. You may have to ask a cop about the kickback from a shotgun, or how sweaty they get in summer wearing body armor. Or what color blood is in the moonlight, or the vibrations through a serrated knife__ handle you feel in your fingers when you are hacking through somebody__ neck and hit cartilage.

And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves.

Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.

And doesn't a writer do the same thing? Isn't she knitting together scraps of dreams? She hunts down the most vivid details and links them in sequences that will let a reader see, smell, and hear a world that seems complete in itself; she builds a stage set and painstakingly hides all the struts and wires and nail holes, then stands back and hopes whoever might come to see it will believe.

The only 'ironclad rules' in writing fiction are the laws of physics and the principles of grammar, and even those can be bent.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

Writing's in the nouns.