Writing
Nov. 5, 2012
Junot Diaz: You keep writing anyway
Junot Diaz: *In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.*
Tags: Junot Diaz · quotes for writers
Nov. 5, 2012
Ian McEwan on the ideal length of a story
Ian McEwan: *I believe the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction.”
Tags: Ian McEwan · quotes for writers
Oct. 2, 2012
Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer (1963)
Ray Bradbury: Story of a Writer (1963) (video)
Tags: Ray Bradbury · video
Sep. 21, 2012
Zadie Smith’s Ten Rules for Writers
When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else…
Tags: quotes for writers · Zadie Smith
Sep. 7, 2012
Jeffrey Eugenides: Not the audience, the reader
Jeffrey Eugenides: “I think about the reader. I care about the reader. Not audience. Not readership. Just the reader. That one person, alone in a room, whose time I’m asking for. I want my books to be worth the reader’s time, and that’s why I don’t publish the books I’ve written that don’t meet this criterion, and why I don’t publish the books I do until they’re ready.”
Tags: Jeffrey Eugenides · quotes for writers
Aug. 29, 2012
Picasso: I am always doing what I cannot do
Picasso: I am always doing what I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Tags: picasso · quotes for writers
Aug. 23, 2012
Elmore Leonard on bad movies and good writing
Elmore Leonard interviewed. (video)
Tags: books · Elmore Leonard · video
Jun. 27, 2012
Aaron Sorkin: Now all I have to do…
Aaron Sorkin on the upcoming Steve Jobs bio pic: *I don’t know what the movie’s about yet…*
Tags: Aaron Sorkin
Jun. 7, 2012
Bradbury: Action is hope
“Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you’ve done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I’ll be damned, I did this today. It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad — you did it. At the end of the week you’ll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I’ll be damned, it’s been a good year.”
Tags: quotes for writers · Ray Bradbury
May. 16, 2012
Ken Burns: On Story
Ken Burns: On Story (video)
Tags: Ken Burns · storytelling · video
Jan. 27, 2012
Making Gatsby
Fitzgerald’s handwritten manuscript of “The Great Gatsby.”
Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald · The Great Gatsby
Jan. 24, 2012
Tweet of the Day
Alain de Botton: “Good work tends to happen only at the end of day: when the fear of accomplishing nothing finally exceeds fear of doing it badly.”
Tags: Alain de Botton · quotes for writers
Dec. 8, 2011
How to Start
*The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.* Alain de Botton
Tags: Alain de Botton · quotes for writers
Dec. 1, 2011
Just create to create
The Right Brain Terrain Manifesto: “You may not be a Picasso or Mozart but you don’t have to be. Just create to create. Create to remind yourself you’re still alive. Make stuff to inspire others to make something too. Create to learn a bit more about yourself.”
Tags: creativity · quotes for writers
Sep. 20, 2011
John le Carré: The final interview
John le Carré, age 79, in what he claims is the final interview he will grant (2010).
Tags: interviews · John le Carre · video
Sep. 12, 2011
The novel-writing process in one chart
Novel-writing process flowchart by Maureen McHugh.
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Sep. 10, 2011
How to Tell a Story
Matt Stone and Trey Parker drop in on a writing class at NYU (video).
Tags: South Park · storytelling · video · writing tips
Jul. 21, 2011
Quote of the Day
Hemingway: “Summer is a discouraging time to work — you don’t feel death coming on the way it does in the fall when the boys really put pen to paper.”
Tags: Hemingway · quotes for writers
Jul. 6, 2011
Every writer is a thief
Joseph Epstein: “Every writer is a thief, though some of us are more clever than others at disguising our robberies. The reason writers are such slow readers is that we are ceaselessly searching for things we can steal and then pass off as our own…”
Tags: Joseph Epstein · quotes for writers