Quotes about writing

The best advice is not to write what you know, it's to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best— write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career. Whenever you're at a loss for what move to make next, just ask yourself, "What would make a better story?"

What is written can be erased, alas.

What I wrote seemed to me more essentially myself than anything I did or said. It often gushed up almost involuntarily like automatic writing, and the difficulty lay in keeping the hot gush continuous and unselfconscious while at the same time directing it with cold intellect into form. I never could write in cold blood. The results were intensely personal, whatever their other defects. (Ch. 12, on writing poetry)

And so it was that Richard had conceived Corporation 9592’s Writers in Residence Program. Years later, he was astounded by the naïveté of it. Writers, as it turned out, rather liked having residences. Once they had moved in, it was nearly impossible to dislodge them.

Home is collecting stories, writing them down, and retelling them. Home is writing, and it grounds, sustains, and nourishes me. Home is the page. The one place I always, always come back to.

This allowed me to do what writers treasure more than anything else: catch the reader off-guard. There’s nothing better than knowing you’re going to outwit with the reader. And the type of people who read sci-fi are very difficult to outwit.

Did she not feel totally fulfilled when she had completed the manuscript, just as if it were another baby she had had?

If a woman is going to write a Book of Peace, it is given her to know devastation. ("Fire" opening line)

"But this isn't a lecture course. The only way any of us can learn this craft is by saturating ourselves in examples of it, in and out of print, and then trying to put the best of what we've found into our own work."

Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. […] It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

Anything we fully do is an alone journey. […] You are alone when you write a book. Accept that and take in any love and support that is given to you, but don't have expectations of how it is supposed to be.

Just write. Just write. Just write. [...]

When we are in the heart of writing it doesn't matter where we are. We can write anyplace.