Manuscripts Quotes - Page 6

• I am the luckiest novelist in the world. I was a first-time novelist who wasn't awash in rejection slips, whose manuscript didn't disappear in slush piles. I have had a wonderful time.

  Vikas Swarup

  Rejection, Novelists, World

  "I'm the luckiest novelist in the world" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. January 15, 2009.

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• The impact of the Yemeni manuscripts is still to be felt. Their variant readings and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic texts is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed.

  Andrew Rippin

  Reading, Impact, Order

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• The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

  John Y. Campbell

  Home, Writing, Simple

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• The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Writing, Cutting, Important

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• If a publisher declines your manuscript, remember it is merely the decision of one fallible human being, and try another.

  Stanley Unwin

  Writing, Decision, Trying

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• Thus there are two books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and public Manuscript, that lies expans'd unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other.

  Thomas Browne

  Nature, Lying, Book

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• I told that girl, in the kindest, gentlest way, that I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict was worthless. It might underrate a work of high merit and lose it to the world, or it might overrate a trashy production and so open the way for its infliction upon the world. I said that the great public was the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort, and therefore it must be best to lay it before that tribunal in the outset, since in the end it must stand or fall by that mighty court's decision any way.

  Mark Twain

  Girl, Fall, Effort

  Mark Twain “Carnival of Crime in Ct”, Library of Alexandria

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• If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Ideas, Two

  Mark Twain (1966). “Mark Twain's Satires and Burlesques”, p.1, Univ of California Press

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• I pulled out the manuscript [from the envelope] and a great big stiff cardboard finger sprung up. This is someone that was so certain they would be rejected, they would be getting their revenge in advance. I was lucky - it could have been a pipe bomb.

  Gardner Dozois

  Revenge, Sprung Up, Would Be

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• I write very raw, ugly, illiterate first drafts very quickly (novels are always in first draft in under a year) and then I spend years and years fine-tuning, revising, editing, etc. What inspires me? Who knows. I am not inspired that much. That’s why I write long form fiction - I am not much of a short story writer. Ideas come seldom, but when a good one comes, I really stick to it and see it out. I’m a problem-solver - I've never thrown out an entire manuscript; I've always forced myself to repair it until it was a lovable thing again.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Writing, Editing, Years

  "Beyond Diaspora: Porochista Khakpour". Interview with Roxanne Naseem Rashedi, lareviewofbooks.org. February 17, 2013.

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• Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation, the wait, the growing heaviness (not of body in this case but of the spirit and the manuscript) toward the end, the initial delight at the sight of the product, fully formed and seemingly perfect, and then the usual postpartum depression. What will people whose opinion I care about, and those whose views I don't value but have weight in the world of reader, think of it?

  Doris Grumbach

  Depression, Baby, Book

  Doris Grumbach (2014). “Extra Innings: A Memoir”, p.7, Open Road Media

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• You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light; You common people of the skies, What are you when the sun shall rise? This was printed with music as early as 1624, in East's Sixth Set of Books, and is found in many manuscripts.

  Henry Wotton

  Book, Eye, Night

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• To visit Morocco is still like turning the pages of some illuminated Persian manuscript all embroidered with bright shapes and subtle lines.

  Edith Wharton

  Morocco, Shapes, Lines

  Edith Wharton (2004). “In Morocco”, p.16, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• Then began an experience that turned my life around-working on a book with a black kid as hero. None of the manuscripts I'd been illustrating featured any black kids-except for token blacks in the background. My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along. Years before I had cut from a magazine a strip of photos of a little black boy. I often put them on my studio walls before I'd begun to illustrate children's books. I just loved looking at him. This was the child who would be the hero of my book.

  Ezra Jack Keats

  Children, Wall, Book

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• A typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1.

  Nicholas Sparks

  New York, Typical, Agents

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• I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.

  Sol Stein

  Book, Writing, Tired

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• Creativity runs across many categories in life, from the arts-and-crafts project a mum or dad does with their kids, to the bestselling author's manuscript, to the designs of the hairdresser, to the creations of the computer programming genius.

  Tabatha Coffey

  Running, Art, Dad

  "I Am a Bitch!" by Tabatha Coffey, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 9, 2012.

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• If you're very serious about writing it's helpful to find an agent. It's becoming more and more competitive to have your manuscript even looked at by an editor. Many companies don't accept unsolicited manuscripts anymore, so they'll pay more attention to something that comes in through an agent.

  Ann M. Martin

  Writing, Editors, Attention

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• If Elmore Leonard met Jim Thompson down a dark alley at midnight they might emerge a week later with thick beards, bloodshot eyes and the manuscript for THE BIG O.

  Eoin Colfer

  Eye, Dark, Midnight

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• The best young writers are convinced they need blurbs from famous writers before an editor will even read the first page of a manuscript. If this is true, then the editorial system that prevails today stinks. And let's start reforming it.

  Diane Wakoski

  Editors, Needs, Pages

  Diane Wakoski (1980). “Toward a new poetry”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• Egypt has managed to reclaim the 13-page papyrus manuscript.

  Zahi Hawass

  Egypt, Pages, Papyrus

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• To be perfectly honest the old habits, specifically deadlines, still very much inform what I do. I am brutally disciplined about getting manuscripts in on time.

  Simon Winchester

  Old Habits, Honest, Deadline

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• You should be writing for the love of the story, and when it comes time to return to the manuscript, everything else belongs behind a closed door.

  Michael Koryta

  Writing, Doors, Stories

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• Instead of taking a year off, I started Dreamers of the Day exactly 36 hours after I sent the manuscript for A Thread of Grace to the publisher!

  Mary Doria Russell

  Years, Grace, Dreamer

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• When I have my manuscript finished, more or less, I type it myself, with two fingers. I type fast with two fingers. And then when it's ready, I reread, recorrect, and retype it. Everything is my own work. I do not give it to secretaries or to typists.

  Elie Wiesel

  Two, Giving, Fingers

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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