Writing Quotes
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I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.
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I've written some poetry, but...songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.
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No one is able to enjoy such feast than the one who throws a party in his own mind.
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When you read a piece of writing that you admire, send a note of thanks to the author.
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The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.
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Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap. It's like spelunking. You kind of create the right path for yourself. But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I'm going down the wrong hole here. And I can't get back to the right hole. I'm not going to be able to get this section back to the right hole - so I'm just going to have to cut it.
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I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.
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Writing on assignment, with lots of money handed to you before you even began, got very scary for me. My dread of not being perfect, something I got from a childhood surrounded by powerful, successful people, began to infect everything I wrote.
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When I write something simple I'm always really proud of it. When you write something that simple with that much air in it and the whole premise behind it is something pretty obvious - that everybody wants to be happy and free - the song is sort of an exercise in not forgetting that's what you really want and what you really need. We can get caught up in a lot of other stuff.
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I do really well when a challenge is put in front of me. I don't just wake up and write. I like being forced to make decisions on the spot. I think that's why I've done so many things as a freelancer.
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It's my language, the language I speak. I've spent a lot more time playing music than talking or writing.
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I had to bring the idea of journalistic distance to writing about myself.
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My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.
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George Smith shows how many of the prophet’s followers embraced plural marriage during a period when the LDS Church was emphatically denying the practice … [and he tells this in] a lucid writing style.
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The only difference between men and women is that women are able to create new little human beings in their bodies while simultaneously writing books, driving tractors, working in offices, planting crops - in general, doing everything men do.
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You don't write a book to show off.
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To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most.
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Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.
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I think people feel for a long time that they ought to know how to write a novel in two drafts.
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The trick is the paradox - turning your story inside out. Now if it is something that appears to be of total normality and then suddenly turns inside out and is a different thing all together then that's fun to write.
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Writing a funny story is one thing. But writing a funny story that inspires others to venture beyond their level of comfort in pursuit of their greater good is what makes me come alive.
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You have to be very productive in order to become excellent. You have to go through a poor period and a mediocre period, and then you move into your excellent period. It may be very well be that some of you have done quite a bit of writing already. You maybe ready to move into your good period and your excellent period. But you shouldn't be surprised if it becomes a very long process.
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If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.
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When you write - explode - fly apart - disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.
