Novel Writing Quotes - Page 3

• I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs.

  Jess Row

  Writing, People, Program

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways.

  Kiese Laymon

  Honesty, Writing, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.

  Andrew O'Hagan

  Art, Jobs, Believe

  "In truth" by Andrew O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. July 14, 2007.

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• Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.

  Rick Moody

  Writing, Relief, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

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• A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Men, Ideas

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.2943, GENERAL PRESS

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• Novel-writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade. One does not just sit behind a screen jotting down other people's conversation. One has for one's raw material every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over that vast, smoldering rubbish-heap of experience, half stifled by fumes and dust, scraping and delving until one finds a few discarded valuables. Then one has to assemble these tarnished and dented fragments, polish them, set them in order, and try to make a coherent and significant arrangement of them.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Writing, Dust, Order

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• When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

  Margaret Atwood

  Believe, Writing, Fiction

  Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

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• Novel writing, to me, is all about language: choosing your words, finding the characters within the words and just really agonizing over every word. It's really crafting this whole piece from nothing.

  Jonathan Tropper

  Writing, Character, Pieces

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The recent extraordinary discovery in Photography, as applied in the operations of the mind, has reduced the art of novel-writing to the merest mechanical labour.

  Lewis Carroll

  Photography, Art, Writing

  Lewis Carroll (2015). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Other Tales”, p.967, Race Point Pub

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