“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.”
~ AGATHA CHRISTIE
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Joseph Heller: “Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
10 Mar
“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
~ JOSEPH HELLER
Mickey Spillane: “Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle.”
9 Mar
“Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it’s a letdown, they won’t buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.”
~ MICKEY SPILLANE, 9 March 1918
Hart Crane: “One must be drenched in words.”
7 Mar
“One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.”
~ HART CRANE
Rumer Godden: “A writer who never explores words is like someone with a gold mine who’s never mined it.”
6 Mar
“A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory…dictionaries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.”
~ RUMER GODDEN
J.B. Priestley: “Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer.”
5 Mar
“Perhaps it would be better not to be a writer, but if you must, then write. You feel dull, you have a headache, nobody loves you, write. If all feels hopeless, if that famous “inspiration” will not come, write. If you are a genius, you’ll make your own rules, but if not – and the odds are clearly against it – go to your desk, no matter what your mood, face the very challenge of the paper – write.”
~ J. B. PRIESTLEY
Ursula LeGuin: “I shave with Chekhov’s Razor.”
4 Mar
“Anton Chekhov gave some advice about revising a story: first, he said, throw out the first three pages. As a young writer I figured that if anybody knew about short stories, it was Chekhov, so I tried taking his advice. I really hoped he was wrong, but of course he was right. It depends on the length of the story, naturally; if it’s very short, you can only throw out the first three paragraphs.
But there are few first drafts to which Chekhov’s Razor doesn’t apply. Starting a story, we all tend to circle around, explain a lot of stuff, set things up that don’t need to be set up. Then we find our way and get going, and the story begins… very often just about on page three.”
~ URSULA LeGUIN
Margaret Atwood: “Writing is not a job description.”
1 Mar
“Writing is not a job description. A great deal of it is luck. Don’t do it if you are not a gambler because a lot of people devote many years of their lives to it (for little reward). I think people become writers because they are compulsive wordsmiths.”
~ MARGARET ATWOOD
Gloria Steinem: “Writing is the only thing…”
28 Feb
“Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.”
~ GLORIA STEINEM
John Updike: “Reserve an hour or more a day to write.”
27 Feb
To young writers, I would merely say, “Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour or more a day to write.” Some very good things have been written on an hour a day… So, take it seriously and just set a quota.
Try to think of communicating with some ideal reader somewhere. Try to think of getting into print. Don’t be content just to call yourself a writer and then bitch about the crass publishing world that won’t run your stuff. We’re still a capitalist country, and writing to some degree is a capitalist enterprise, when it’s not a total sin to try to make a living and court an audience.
“Read what excites you,” would be my advice, and even if you don’t imitate it you will learn from it… I would like to think that in a country this large – and a language even larger – that there ought to be a living in it for somebody who cares, and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.
~ JOHN UPDIKE
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