Writing By Writers Quotes - Page 7

• The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Friendship, Writing, Waste

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• If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.

  David Brin

  Writing, Family Friends, Family Life

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• Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.

  Anne McCaffrey

  Writing, Together, Using Words

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• Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

  Franz Kafka

  Hate, Obsession, Intense

  Franz Kafka (1995). “The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories”, Random House LLC

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• There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

  H. L. Mencken

  Writing, Dull, Subjects

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• It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Fall, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1966). “Johnsonian miscellanies”, Constable

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• The reader has certain rights. He bought your story. Think of this as an implicit contract. He's entitled to be entertained, instructed, amused; maybe all three. If he quits in the middle, or puts the book down feeling his time has been wasted, you're in violation.

  Larry Niven

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

  Stephen King

  Hurt, Children, Writing

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• All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.

  George Orwell

  Selfish, Lying, Writing

  1946 'Why I Write'.

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• I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, World, Want

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• I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

  Mark Twain

  Flower, Writing, Simple

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.65, Chartwell

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• Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Excuse

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• It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.

  Jack Kerouac

  Writing, Way, Inspiration To Write

  Jack Kerouac (1995). “The Portable Jack Kerouac”, Viking Adult

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• Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

  J. P. Donleavy

  Writing, Worst Moments, Writing Fiction

  Quoted in Playboy, May 1979

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• The first sentence cant be written until the final sentence is written.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Writing, Firsts, Finals

  Joyce Carol Oates, Lee Milazzo (1989). “Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates”, p.140, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Odds, Stories

  "King of the Jungle" by John J. Miller, reason.com. August/September 1999.

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• How to read writers on writing: With respect, amusement, and skepticism. They will contradict one another-as they should-for each writer brings an individual history to the writing task. There is no single theology here.

  Donald Murray

  Writing, Tasks, Amusement

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• It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing; they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose.

  Robertson Davies

  Attitude, Fall, Mean

  "Elements of Style". Essay by Robertson Davies, 1959.

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