I would say just start writing. You've got to write every day. Copy someone that you like if you think that perhaps could become your sound, too. I did that with Hemingway, and I thought I was writing...
A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic yet it seems like it's a great secret.
There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.
I learn from everything I do, right and wrong. I think it helps me grow as a writer and a person.
You take a universal concept, something that has been done a million times (because everything has been done a million times), and add a fresh twist to it. Something no one saw coming. But mostly...
The more time you can put between you and your manuscript, the more fresh your eyes become and the more mistakes you'll catch. Let a chapter rest for a day, you'll see ways to improve it. Let your...
But on the question of who you're writing for, don't be eager to please.
The thing you are most afraid to write—write that - advice to young writers
You must write as if Dostoyevsky himself will be reading your novel, and Shakespeare will be acting it out.
One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.
good writing should be grasped at once - in a second.
If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the...
Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.
But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.
What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you...
If I turned towards books, it was because they were the only sanctuary I knew, one I needed in order...
We all had to pay, but not for the crimes we were accused of. There were other scores to settle.
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they...
Hope for some means its loss for others; when the hopeless regain some hope, those in power--the...
if you don't understand something, you can't approximate it. You're really just guessing.
Why are they going to disappear him? I don't know. It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good...
Keep in mind that when we talk of a great painting we are not really talking about anything great....
Read me back the last line. 'Read me back the last line,' read back the corporal who could take...