“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music—the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people. Forget yourself.”
~ HENRY MILLER
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Paddy Chayevsky: “Stop thinking of writing as art.”
26 Jan
“Artists don’t talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it’s to stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.”
~ PADDY CHAYEFSKY
Tom Clancy: “Success is a finished book.”
25 Jan
“Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.”
~ TOM CLANCY
Ray Bradbury: “You must write every single day of your life.”
24 Jan
“To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.
You must write every single day of your life.
You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.
You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.
I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.
May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories—science fiction or otherwise.
Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
~ RAY BRADBURY
Mark Twain: “…You want them all to land in hell…”
23 Jan
“The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.”
~ MARK TWAIN
Ben Bova: “More fantastic the tale, plainer the prose.”
22 Jan
“In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don’t ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.”
~ BEN BOVA
Stephen King: “Fiction is a lie.”
21 Jan
“Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
~ STEPHEN KING
Nora Ephron: “Structure is the key to narrative.”
20 Jan
“Structure is the key to narrative. These are the crucial questions any storyteller must answer: Where does it begin? Where does the beginning start to end and the middle begin? Where does the middle start to end and the end begin?”
~ NORA EPHRON
John Gardner: “Character is the very life of fiction.”
19 Jan
“Character is the very life of fiction. Setting exists so that the character has someplace to stand. Plot exists so the character can discover what he is really like, forcing the character to choice and action. And theme exists only to make the character stand up and be somebody.”
~ JOHN GARDNER
A.A. Milne: “Anyone can be an author.”
18 Jan
“Almost anyone can be an author; the challenge is to collect money and fame from this state of being.”
~ A.A. Milne, b. 18 January 1882
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