#writing

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#semicolons #writing #nothing

The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#write

Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#love

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#writing #want

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#words

Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101: 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. 3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. 4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. 5. Start as close to the end as possible. 6. Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of. 7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. 8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#love

I thought I'd been condescended to as an Indian - that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#been #compared #condescended #i #indian

My career means, if you're a non-Indian writing about Indians, at least there's one Indian in your rearview mirror. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#career #indian #indians #least #means

Writing is a lonely business. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#lonely #lonely business #writing

I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. (“Advance Notice”) ↗

— Richard Matheson

#writing #death