You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page. Jodi Picoult
It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer. Gerald Brenan
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. William Somerset Maugham
Trust your reader, don’t try to describe things. Give a hint and they will fulfill this hint with their own imagination. Paulo Coelho
The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so. Ray Bradbury
Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance. James Baldwin
In a story it’s the scene – the setting / characters / action / interaction / dialogue / feelings – that makes us hold our breath, and cry .. and turn the page to find out what happens next. And so, until the scene ends, each sentence should lead to the next sentence. Ursula K. Le Guin
Sometimes the ideas just come to me. Other times I have to sweat and almost bleed to make ideas come. It’s a mysterious process, but I hope I never find out exactly how it works. I like a mystery, as you may have noticed. J.K. Rowling
I’ve been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can’t really say where the desire came from; I’ve always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down. J.K. Rowling
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised. John Steinbeck
As for “Write what you know,” I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them. Ursula K. Le Guin
Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer. Ray Bradbury
The more I’m let alone and not worried the better I can function. Ernest Hemingway
I go out to my little office, where I’ve got a manuscript, and the last page I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it’s like getting on a taxiway. I’m able to go through and revise it and put myself – click – back into that world. Stephen King
When I’m working I work every day, three, four hours, and I try to get those six pages and I try to get them faily clean. Stephen King
All my life as a writer I have been committed to the idea that in fiction the story value holds dominance over every other facet of the writer’s craft; characterization, theme, mood, none of these things is anything if the story is dull. And if the story does hold you, all else can be forgiven. Stephen King
On first drafts: It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts. Stephen King
Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially. Amos Bronson Alcott
It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. Virginia Woolf
Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. Annie Dillard
First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him. Ray Bradbury
