#on-writing

"Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream."

"A novel rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise."

"Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!"

"Never put off writing until you are better at it."

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."

"I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in."

"In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got."

"Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon."

"Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it."

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."

"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it."

"Only a mediocre person is always at his best."

"You can fix anything but a blank page."

"The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first."

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."

"I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words."

"People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them."

"You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it."

"All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful."