writers-on-writing

Women__ fiction_ doesn__ sound like anything but a slur to my ears.

Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you__l end up with less of either.

I don__ think there__ a less elitist thing on earth to do than to try and reach out and connect with another human being . . . And that__ what the best writing does, that__ what art does. It looks a reader in the eye, and it proceeds honestly with that reader, and nakedly. There is a compact there, a bond, a relationship, a union, a symbiosis . . . It__ not about you. Whether you__e a genius or an idiot savant. It__ about the work. The work is more important than you. So it__ not about back-claps and plaudits and __sn__ that author smart._ It__ about, __his book really connected with me. And even though you, my friend, are very different from me, I__ lending it to you, because I think it will connect with you as well._ Community. Across the eras. Between people who have never met, who will never meet, who are nonetheless bound in something together, in different ways.

The way my mind flows is conducive to self-learning. I do better obsessively studying various writers and writing techniques and writing theories on my own than I would do if I were in a classroom and the professor was telling me (and 20 other students at the same time) to study these same things. Even if the professor told us to study the exact things I would otherwise be studying on my own, I would have a much harder time applying myself and focusing and taking anything the professor assigned seriously. That__ just the way my mind works__y fear of groupthink, my desire toward (passion for, obsession with) uniqueness and originality and the creation of new things. By studying things on my own, I might arrive at the exact same place others arrive at as they study amongst their peers__ut to my mind, this would be okay. I at least would have arrived there (at those thoughts, at those techniques, at those ideas and approaches and whatever-else-have-you) on my own. And that__ just me.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I'm a grown up, they call me a writer.

When I told my teachers I wanted to be a writer, alot of them encouraged me to lower my expectations and to be more realistic. So I rode away on my magical, winged horse, spraying faerie dust behind me, and laughing manically as I went.

Introduction of deus ex machina is a tell-tale sign of sloppy plotting.

As far as you are able to gather from hints scattered through these letters, Apocryphal Power, riven by internecine battles and eluding the control of its founder, Ermes Marana, has broken into two groups: a sect of enlightened followers of the Archangel of Light and a sect of nihilist followers of the Archon of Shadow. The former are convinced that among the false books flooding the world they can track down the few that bear a truth perhaps extrahuman or extraterrestrial. The latter believe that only counterfeiting, mystification, intentional falsehood can represent absolute value in a book, a truth not contaminated by the dominant pseudo truths.

Growing up, I used to climb out my window onto the roof and look up at the stars. There, in the quiet, I would write stories inside my head.

Writing isn't difficult. Writing well is difficult. What is most difficult is being with the interior experience that manifests as resistance to writing.

A story is a part of the writer's soul, told to the world.

Make today the day you begin that awesome idea you have had for years. Now go, write this book, and remember that today is an important day in history.

Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.

Rejection. Rejection. You can't handle rejection!

It's good to write badly. Things can only get better.

Every writer on this planet THINKS he is a great writer (why waste your entire life writing when you believe you are mediocre?) but its deemed socially unacceptable to actually speak out such thoughts. So, modesty is always a public concept and not an inner one. For that reason alone 'modesty' can actually be said to be the product of a large ego, for the ego is primarily concerned with survival and society rewards this dishonesty and tends to punish honesty (see Camus)

Committing your thoughts and feelings to words is like putting your soul on a plate and hoping the diners will like what they eat.

Destroying the planet is like stepping from a moving train and thinking it will all work out.