Writing Quotes
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Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, 'Don't try.' That fits the writing, too. I don't try; I just type.
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I think the hardest stories we tell are always the ones about ourselves. And as a journalist, I was taught that I'm never supposed to put myself in the story. So I spent what, 11, 12 years of my life writing about other people so I don't have to face my own life.
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I just assume that I'll fail at something for several years - that I'll try my hardest and still fail for several years. With writing, that turned out to be wrong. I tried my hardest and failed for about fifteen years.
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The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with readers. Maybe I'm writing one long narrative, and each book, however different from the last, is just a chapter.
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The one thing a lifetime in the newspaper business teaches you is pace - you spend all your time trying to make sure that the reader's going to finish what you're writing.
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Getting a beginner publishing deal really helped me gain the skills. I just kept writing and writing. You just take everything out of life and turn it into an idea or a melody or a song and find the best writers you can to write with that fit you and know what you want to do.
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There's good movies and there's bad movies. The genres are never dead, it's just about how to apply them and articulate them and execute them - the story, the quality of the writing, the acting, the design elements, the directorial execution - all these things make it what it is.
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For a long time, I missed being in the courtroom every day. I missed trial work. It was so much a part of my life. It was what I did and who I was. But over the years, I did find the opportunity to realize my childhood dream of writing crime fiction.
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Personally, it's a comfort and happiness to know that my work is taken seriously and is not marginalised and put in a box of ethnic immigrant writing in America.
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I prefer writing in the mornings, so to that extent I have a routine. I do reading and other things in the afternoon.
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My best writing has to do with an internal process that I'm working out unconsciously and put into my characters.
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I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it, for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.
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I would love to blog daily but I have not been making time for it because my internet is very slow. Everyone should make time for writing.
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The abortion cases produced an enormous amount of mail to my chambers, vastly more than to the other chambers, I am sure. I sometimes thought there wasn't a woman in the United States who didn't write me a letter on one side or the other of that issue.
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Rod Clark has one of the most unique voices I have ever encountered. I still quote some of his political insights years later. To have him write political science fiction is both appropriate and intriguing.
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I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!
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I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this.
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Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.
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Writing is not a great profession as a lot of writers proclaim. I write because this is something I can do. Another thing—very often I think a lot of writers write because they have failed to do other things. How many writers can’t drive? A lot. They’re not practical. They are not capable in everyday life.
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I really don't think records should be made in the manner where you sit and write, and when you're finished writing, you start recording. That just seems conventional and old-fashioned to me.
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As one of my creative writing professors once said, there are only seven plots. What makes those plots different is how you handle them, your voice, your style, and your way of thinking. That’s all. People can mimic your style, but they can never achieve your unique point of view.
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I'm sorry that our country and the people do not consider the arts as vital to our well-being as, say, medicine. Suffering is unnecessary. It doesn't make you a better artist; it only makes you a hungry one. However, to me the acquisition of the craft of writing was worth any amount of suffering.
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Writing a song is a personal thing, and you have to have a lot of trust to try things and not be embarrassed.
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You hold the pen like a needle in a seismic observatory, and in fact it is not we who write, but rather we are written. Writing means to read oneself
