#raft

When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories. I had read Arthur Machen before I read Lovecraft, and I didn’t have that reaction at all. It was what I sensed in Lovecraft’s works and what I learned about his myth as the “recluse of Providence” that made me think, “That’s for me!” I already had a grim view of existence, so there was no problem there. I was and am agoraphobic, so being reclusive was a snap. The only challenge was whether or not I could actually write horror stories. So I studied fiction writing and wrote every day for years and years until I started to get my stories accepted by small press magazines. I’m not comparing myself to Lovecraft as a person or as a writer, but the rough outline of his life gave me something to aspire to. I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t discovered Lovecraft. ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#h-p-lovecraft #horror #writing #life

Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I began a new story. My characters are my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them. ↗

— Red Haircrow

#writing #writing-craft #writing-process #writing-style #life

If I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now I have your attention. ↗

— Lisa Cron

#women-writers-on-writing #writing-craft #writing-how-to #science

Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#thought-experiments #writing-craft #experience

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#readers-and-writers #reading #writing #writing-craft #writing-process

...the answer is not in the damn blank page - it's in the days or years before and you have to dredge it up - exhume the past again ... ↗

— John Geddes

#experience #memories #past #writing-craft #writing-process

I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret. ↗

— Silas House

#writing #writing-craft #love

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing. ↗

— Sydney Smith

#enjoyment #novels #pleasure #writing #love

Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#miracles #superstition #witchcraft #atheist

The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul. ↗

— Miranda July

#writing-craft #metaphor