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It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.
Sep 17, 2025
If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.
Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.
I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.
Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.
Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
I try to leave out the parts readers skip.
And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.
Read, read read. Read everything.
There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.
We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.
It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.
If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.
Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.
Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.
It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.
Exercise the writing muscle every day.
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.
Writers are always selling somebody out.
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.
The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
If you do not have an alert and curious interest in character and dramatic situation, if you have no visual imagination and are unable to distinguish between honest emotional reactions and sentimental approaches to life, you will never write a competent short story.
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.
You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you.
I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.
Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.
People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.
Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
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.