#craft

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more." ("The Castle") ↗

— Michael Connelly

#writing #writing-craft #perseverance

poems are small moments of enlightenment ↗

— Natalie Goldberg

#poet #poetry #poetry-life #poetry-quotes #writing

Pursue knowledge as though it is your life-blood, then you will know greatness! ↗

— Monique Rockliffe

#knowledge-wisdom #writing-craft #life

Magic is a funny term,' she'd say. 'There is nothing supernatural about the earth. As long as you know what does what. ↗

— Suzanne Palmieri-Hayes

#nature #witchcraft #funny

Ladies and gentleman," he said over the speakers, "welcome aboard this recently liberated Gulfstream V. If I could have your attention for just a few moments, I'd like to go over the safety features of this aircraft. It has an engine, to make us go, and wings, to keep us in the air. There are seatbelts, which won't do you an awful lot of good if we fly into the side of a mountain. ↗

— Derek Landy

#craft #fly #funny #malifecent #plane

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle. ↗

— Mickey Spillane

#writing-craft #writing-process #writing-process

Each thing you add to your story is a drop of paint falling into clear water; it spreads through and colors everything. ↗

— Lisa Cron

#writing-advice #writing-craft-talent #writing-craft

You can’t just come out and say what you have to say. That’s what people do on airplanes, when a man plops down next to you in the aisle seat of your flight to New York, spills peanuts all over the place (back when the cheapskate airlines at least gave you peanuts), and tells you about what his boss did to him the day before. You know how your eyes glaze over when you hear a story like that? That’s because of the way he’s telling his story. You need a good way to tell your story. ↗

— Adair Lara

#writing-advice #writing-craft #writing-craft

Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His grandfather recited poetry on firelight evenings: Marmion, Childe Harold, Ragnarok. His father sent him to Downing College in Cambridge to study under F. R. Leavis. Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students; he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to, or change it. The young Blackadder wrote poems, imagined Dr Leavis’s comments on them, and burned them. ↗

— A.S. Byatt

#craft #literature #poetry #self-confidence #skill

My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vivdness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie.... ↗

— Mary Shelley

#on-writing-frankenstein #writing-craft #imagination