writing-process

Books most certainly don't write themselves, but life does. When in doubt about what to write, use your own life.

Writing to impress others is the surest path to pretentious mediocrity.

Briefer is better, so learn to write tight

I had taken up my quill to begin writing many times before now, but I always abandoned it quickly: each time I was overcome with fear. Yes, may God forgive me, but the letters of the alphabet frighten me terribly. They are sly, shameless demons__nd dangerous! You open the inkwell, release them: they run off__nd how will you ever get control of them again! They come to life, join, separate, ignore your commands, arrange themselves as they like on the paper__lack, with tails and horns. You scream at them and implore them in vain: they do as they please. Prancing, pairing up shamelessly before you, they deceitfully expose what you did not wish to reveal, and they refuse to give voice to what is struggling, deep within your bowels, to come forth and speak to mankind.

Now the thing is no longer a vision: it is paper.

Attributing to another author, "Writing a novel is like setting a goal and walking there in your sleep.

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture _ still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish.

When I sleep tonight I dream of what I will imagine tomorrow.

Talk about something else. Tell me about this book you are writing." "What book?" I say. Then : "Oh, I know what you mean. I am not doing that anymore. I couldn't finish._________I don't think he knows, not really. Not yet. In my haste to finish this story before death overtakes me, inevitably I have left out many things, and often I have expresses myself inelegantly, and no doubt here and there I have said more than I meant to. When you return, my dear type writer, we will review what we have done, and add this and subtract that. This work has become my hobby and my consolation, and I enjoy it.

Begin at the beginning as you understood it, proceed through the middle, continue to the end, and then stop," said Master Li, and he sauntered out to get drunk....

I get up at 4am or 5am and write for a few hours before the rest of the world wakes up. And I don__ drink caffeine. That combination is basically a deal breaker for every other author I know. I don__ usual check email, Facebook or Twitter until at least 6:30am, either, another killer for most authors.

I have learned how I work best, and that is something that, if you're going to be a professional writer, you should be noticing: under what circumstances you work at your best, and to not get yourself cornered into writing in a way that doesn't let you do your best.

Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you__e written. Comedy pushes limits, makes people uncomfortable, and is a natural reaction to the environment. Otherwise, as I said, it is forced. Let it flow and give your characters permission to cross a line or two, but only if you can take the heat afterward.

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.

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

The movementOf the body isWhere poetryBegins

The farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources.

I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content__ind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on. I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction is like surfing, while writing a novel is like navigating with your car. So when you navigate with your car, you want to get somewhere. When you surf, you don__ want to get somewhere, you just don__ want to fall off your board. I think the equivalent of balance is tone, so I think tone gives birth to the story.