Advice For Writers Writing Quotes

#1. Developing your voice takes ...
time and practice.

Darynda Jones

#2. I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they "don't have time to read." This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.

Stephen King

#3. Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.

William Strunk Jr.

#4. Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn't build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#5. [G]ive nothing centrality, because writing is about continually shifting weight from one thing and moment to the other.

Amit Chaudhuri

#6. People say that writers write for money. From my own experience that's not true. I write for me. I publish for money.

Greg Curtis

#7. Anything that distracts from the story you are trying to tell should be promptly and mercilessly dealt with.

Craig Hart

#8. Make today the day you begin that awesome idea you have had for years. Now go, write this book, and remember that today is an important day in history.

M. Kirin

#9. My best advice for aspiring writers is to read a lot and write. Don't worry if you don't get your first, fifth or tenth novel published, if you keep going you'll make it. Also read "how to write" books as they may make the process a bit quicker.

Katie Fforde

#10. Read a ton, write every day if you can, and don't mimic another writer's style. Find your own voice.

James Patterson

#11. As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story

Richard Yates

#12. My advice for writers is to get a good day job. It takes the pressure off writing if you have a job that pays the bills.

Abraham Verghese

#13. One of the things that put me off writing for a while was that piece of advice everybody gives new writers: 'Write what you know.' Nobody would ever want to read about my boring life! But I do know a lot of things about different societies' cultures and mythologies. The way people were and are.

Carol Berg

#14. I have very specific advice for aspiring writers: go to New York. And if you can't go to New York, go to the place that represents New York to you, where the standards for writing are high, there are other people who share your dreams, and where you can talk, talk, talk about your interests.

Walter Kirn

#15. One, don't wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it's going?

Roger Ebert

#16. And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves.

Darynda Jones

#17. My advice would be to write-never to stop writing, to keep it up all the time, to be painstaking about it, to write until you begin to write.

Gabriel Fielding

#18. People say, 'What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?' I say, they don't really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they're gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.

R.L. Stine

#19. Someone should take a vacuum cleaner to his sentences.

John Searles

#20. You never finish writing a novel, you eventually abandon it.

Tom Winton

#21. When you have something meaningful to say, you lose your desire for much grammar; for only in the incompetence of words does one seek the redeeming power of vocabulary.

King Samuel Benson

#22. Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword.

Max Hawthorne

#23. Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#24. Don't try to describe an orgasm if you've never had one.

Marty Rubin

#25. The divine thoughts comes from God, we are only vessel for its transmission.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#26. Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.

John Green

#27. When I reach for my pen, nothing is out of reach.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#28. Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you'll end up with less of either.

Don Roff

#29. I'm not talented or gifted. I'm a committed, meticulous workaholic. The only reason I succeed is because I refuse to fail.

Jessie Snow

#30. My advice to writers is this:
Walk, talk, breathe, laugh, cry, fall, rise, fail, succeed, run, jump, love, hate, hide, seek, learn, work, play, feel, LIVE.
Then write it down.

S. Alex Martin

#31. To be a better cook, cook more. To be a better writer, read more.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#32. It's better to be remembered for what you said, not what you earned.

Carla H. Krueger

#33. Writing a book with completely fictitious characters is like running a democracy, centered around a capital state. You constantly live with the fear & suspicion that one of the characters will start an uncontrollable rebellion.

Shomprakash Sinha Roy

#34. The three rules to writing a novel;

1) Write
2) Write more
3) Keep writing

Sci Furz

#35. Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.

Deana J. Driver

#36. Heinlein's Rules for Writers
Rule One: You Must Write
Rule Two: Finish What Your Start
Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market
Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold

Robert A. Heinlein

#37. If we are artists- hell, whether or not we're artists- it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn't have existed if not for the fire, the genetic mutation, the sick baby, the accident.

Dani Shapiro