#writing

A successful story always offers its audience more than a simple resolution of events. A story offers a dramatic affirmation of human needs that are acted out to resolution and fulfillment. Even when that resolution and fulfillment are dark, the journey can still be vivid, potent and illuminating. ↗

— Bill Johnson

#writing-craft

There will be pages. Lots and lots of pages. Most of the pages will have letters on them, and a vast majority of these letters will be in the Roman alphabet. ↗

— Aaron Allston

#writing-craft #writing-craft

Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly." [Colm Tóibín, Novelist – Portrait of the Artist, The Guardian, 19 February 2013] ↗

— Colm Tóibín

#craft #novels #writing #writing-craft

Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. ↗

— Stephen King

#self-doubt #stephen-king #writing #writing-craft

The solution, once revealed, must seem to have been inevitable. At least half of all the mystery novels published violate this law." (Casual Notes on the Mystery Novel, 1949) ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#mysteries #solution #technique #writing #writing-craft

[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine." (A Qualified Farewell) ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#ownership #solitude #writing #writing-craft

You are not an "author," you are a writer. If your books are still selling like hotcakes ten years after your demise, THEN you're an author. ↗

— H.P. Oliver

#writing-craft

Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost. ↗

— Thomas Bernhard

#writers-block #writing #writers-block

Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone. More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp. It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind. (“Mad House”) ↗

— Richard Matheson

#writer-s-block #writing #writers-block

How could poetry and literature have arisen from something as plebian as the cuneiform equivalent of grocery-store bar codes? I prefer the version in which Prometheus brought writing to man from the gods. But then I remind myself that…we should not be too fastidious about where great ideas come from. Ultimately, they all come from a wrinkled organ that at its healthiest has the color and consistency of toothpaste, and in the end only withers and dies. ↗

— Alice Weaver Flaherty

#poetry #writing #writers-block