writing-process

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.

I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling ... I wrote every day, at home, in the office, whether I felt like it or not, I just did it.

There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo.

I__e always said, __ have nothing to say, only to add._ And it__ with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that _ the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not.]

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.

Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn't necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of heart, the first sentence, however tentative and awkward, can lead to a desire to go just a little further.

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

Copies have been dethroned; the economic model built on them is collapsing. In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies are no longer the basis of wealth. Now relationships, links, connections, and sharing are. Value has shifted away from a copy toward the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize, edit, authenticate, display, mark, transfer, and engage a work. Art is a conversation, not a patent office. The citation of sources belongs to the realms of journalism and scholarship, not art. Reality can__ be copyrighted.

If writing didn't require thinking then we'd all be doing it.

10 Steps to Becoming a Better WriterWrite.Write more.Write even more.Write even more than that.Write when you don__ want to.Write when you do.Write when you have something to say.Write when you don__.Write every day.Keep writing.

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn__ work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they__e done they__e done.

I'm not a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer. I just have a vivid imagination and type 90 WPM.

Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I begin a new story. My characters are aspects of my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them.

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.