writing-craft

I have this idea that writing is all about divergent thinking colliding with a hurricane of emotions.

Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb.

Bringing you closer to the fragile edge of living is the job of a writer.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds.

During 30 years of earning my daily bread as a writer I have learned many lessons about our craft. The most significant of those lessons is that I still have many lessons to learn about out craft.

No matter how entertaining, diverse, concise, or detailed, a writing craft book is, it__ not going to work magic on you, it__ not going to suddenly make you a brilliant writer simply by reading it. You need to use what you read and learn in your own writing. Because that__ when you have those AHA moments. That's when it really sticks.

The best lie is the one that has an element of truth, so it__ good to include something real in your fiction.

An obscure flesh-and-blood Gascon, forgotten by History, transformed into a legendary giant by the novelist's genius

All great movies have one thing in common: every frame of every scene could stand alone as a work of art. Why should it be different in a book?

When you write, it__ like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring them unity. Your fingers have still not perfected the task. Some of the braids are long, others are short. Some are thick, others are thin. Some are heavy. Others are light. Like the diverse women of your family. Those whose fables and metaphors, whose similes and soliloquies, whose diction and je ne sais quoi daily slip into your survival soup, by way of their fingers.

We slip into a dream, forgetting the room we're sitting in, forgetting it's lunchtime or time to go to work. We recreate, with minor and for the most part unimportant changes, the vivid and continuous dream the writer worked out in his mind (revising and revising until he got it right) and captured in language so that other human beings, whenever they feel like it, may open his book and dream that dream again.

A blank page is no empty space. It is brimming with potential... It is a masterpiece in waiting -- yours.

The invisibility factor of women in this industry is not unlike the invisibility of girl geeks. We know we exist, but everyone else seems to think we__e an enigma every time they get the notion to write about us and what we apparently want. What we want isn__ any different than what anyone wants. Good stories. With characters we can relate to or identify with or that are interesting to read about. And we__ like to feel welcome, not the perpetual other. We don__ want to feel excluded or like props in every narrative. We don__ want or need every story to be about a girl character. But we__ like them to be treated with the same care and attention male characters are. And it is possible, even in male dominated narratives.

She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story - not necessarily what did happen or what had happened.

Rejection sucks. It sucks every time, whether it's a big suck or a little suck. But it's part of the process. It's part of being a writer. It's a badge that says 'I'm serious about this, and I'm sending out my work.

What makes a writer successful is not money or fame (though both are nice) ... it's that in being true to her or himself, the words were able to connect to a reader's heart.

You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.