Writing Advice Quotes

The best writing advice I ever got was "Keep moving forward, don't retreat into rewrites." The worst came from a book that said "Writing fiction is like telling lies," which just seems stupid to me.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor; the enemy of the people. It will keep you insane your whole life.

Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

Writing's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't do that myself. I'm lying to everybody. I write a paragraph, and then I rewrite that paragraph. I want to feel like I'm standing on firm ground before I move on to the next paragraph. Mentally, I have to do that.

When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in . . . The edit.

Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Complicated Grief was written in larger and more coherent (if disparate) shapes. The question was how they fit together. The mind is coherent, trust that was the best writing advice I ever got (I got it from Carole Maso and I pass it on). It's true, and clearer and clearer as one grows and gains an improved sense of who one actually is (as versus who one was supposed to be).

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created - nothing.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

I was reluctant to talk about my kids on the blog. I kept telling myself, "People aren't coming here for stories about your kids. They want to hear about the upcoming books, writing advice, conventions..."

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

The best writing advice I had was [in] ‘Heinlein’s Rules for Writers’ by (American science fiction author) Robert A. Heinlein. His first rule is that you must write, and I was already doing that, but his second rule is, ‘You must finish what you write,’ and that had a big impact on me.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

Riffing on language will create wonderful effects you never intended. Which leads me to this writing advice: 'Always take credit for good stuff you didn't intend, because you'll be getting plenty of criticism in your career for bad stuff you didn't mean either.'

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I'm in good company there.

To Grandma, for being my first editor and giving me the best writing advice I’ve ever received: “Christopher, I think you should wait until you’re done with elementary school before worrying about being a failed writer.

The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.

The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.