Writers Craft Quotes & Sayings

Being a writer is a rather hazardous occupation and there is a horribly high rate of writers who barely have the money for the paper and pen they use for their craft. — Herbert Gold

Developing your voice takes ...
time and practice. — Darynda Jones

Rich will be my life if I
can keep my memories full
and brimming, and record
them on clear-eyed
mornings while I set
joyously to work setting
pen to holy craft. — Roman Payne

Our culture places a very high value on storytelling, and the more that Catholic writers are able to master that craft, the more they can speak to the culture, the more powerful their stories will be. — Regina Doman

Writers need to learn their trade, and how to negotiate the increasingly difficult marketplace. The trade can be taught and learned just as the craft can. But a workshop where the trade is the principal focus of interest is not a writing workshop. It is a business class. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I write into an old book that smells of dust and whose pages are floppy with damp. Sometimes the ink splodges onto the paper, other times it will barely leave the nib of my pen. — Fennel Hudson

...I've never understood the logic that says a work doesn't need to be judged on the quality of its writing or characters simply because its genre. On the other hand, I've also never understood the logic of excusing a work from the need to tell a story worth telling about people worth knowing simply because the author writes pretty language or has some insights to offer. — Glen Hirshberg

This book is written for the professional writer who is making a living, but just barely. It is also for the aspiring writer who is looking for a niche. And for all the writers-in-between who would like to get paid well for writing. Entering the world of corporate communications is not selling out - it is an opportunity to sharpen your skills, practice your craft, and pay the rent, all at the same time! — Mary Moreno

People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions. — Michelle M. Pillow

Writers don't suffer from insanity, they depend upon it! — Avijeet Das

Strunk was born in 1869, and today's writers cannot base their craft exclusively on the advice of a man who developed his sense of style before the invention of the telephone (let alone the Internet), before the advent of modern linguistics and cognitive science, before the wave of informalization that swept the world in the second half of the twentieth century. — Steven Pinker

Today is the day that you create worlds, you change lives, you make a something, a someone, out of nothing.
Today is the day you become a writer. — Alessandra Torre

A: Why yes you can! Even better if you tell others or write a review. I read every single review on Amazon, I promise. This is how books are discovered, so if you want other readers to find the books you're enjoying, take a few minutes and craft a review. Do it for all the books you enjoy. As writers, our souls subsist on your feedback. It means a lot to us! — Hugh Howey

I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve. — Eleanor Catton

Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right. — Amy Joy

If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English. — Elliott Colla

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we've thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth. — Rob Bignell, Editor

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth's ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar. — Brad Leithauser

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. — George Orwell

On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost all of us will produce a lot of really lousy stories before we start to get good. (Not all of us will choose to publish those lousy stories, but that's a whole separate discussion ... ) — Jim C. Hines

I think I'm more sympathetic to writers, to the work and the struggle and the craft of it, than when I was in graduate school at NYU and was very judgmental. — John Searles

I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night. — Khaled Hosseini

Murphy is a writer's best friend, but you have to keep an eye on him, or he'll steal the silver. — Patricia C. Wrede

But beyond that, really, stop trying to be good. People's definitions of "good" vary. What one person loves, another hates. So stop obsessing over being a good writer. It doesn't matter. Too many writers are caught up with insecure thoughts of whether they are any good. It's crazy. Enough with this neurotic behavior. Time to be confident in your craft. — Jeff Goins

Good writing is more about graft and craft than inspiration and aspiration. — Johnny Rich

All writers pen sad stories to garner sympathy, writing is after all for the abandoned of the society: the ink-leech, spewing black blood and sucking innocent souls. — Aporva Kala

I never really feel that I'm stuck. I actually think that people are never stuck, there's no such thing as writers block, I think that theres terror that can silence you. But if you can think of it as a dynamic thing I mean a writers block, it's a paralysis an immobility and the thing that has immobilized you is a very powerful force. Immobility is itself an act, it's a choice. It can sometimes take as much energy to remain immobile as it does to be mobile. And if you think of it in a dynamic way then it'd freeze you from the sense that at some point your talent will simply abandon you and you're just a vacant shell with nothing to say, I don't think that ever really happens. But I think that terror, bad experience, trauma and so on can absolutely silence you. — Tony Kushner

Not all writers are crazy. Only the ones who are serious enough about their craft. — Hanna Abi Akl

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect. — George R R Martin

Most - but not all - of the writers I knew then were young men who cherished their independence, were unconcerned about job security, and were serious about their writing. They didn't want to be anyone's employee if it interfered with their writing. They were halfway or all the way outside the mainstream and were often not interested in becoming part of the burgeoning corporate society. They had more freedom than your average American. — Sterling Lord

Readers have a loyalty that cannot be matched anywhere else in the creative arts, which explains why so many writers who have run out of gas can keep coasting anyway, propelled on to the bestseller lists by the magic words AUTHOR OF on the covers of their books. — Stephen King

Ron Carlson says, 'The most undervalued craft device that fiction writers need is empathy. You need to be able to actually imagine what your characters are going through. You've got to stay close. When you're in a story and dealing with people you're not certain of, or you've just come to meet because they've stepped into your story, it's very important to go slow and sit in their chair.'
As Carlson also says, you don't have to love the people or the characters you write about, but they should be at least as smart as you. Look beyond stereotypes. — Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Writing is hard. That's why so few people stick to it and actually finish things. And why you have a right to be immensely proud when you finish something.
[There Is No Such Thing as Writers' Block: Blog post, October 7, 2001] — Andy Ihnatko

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration. — Orson Scott Card

Five common traits of good writers: (1) They have something to say. (2) They read widely and have done so since childhood. (3) They possess what Isaac Asimov calls a "capacity for clear thought," able to go from point to point in an orderly sequence, an A to Z approach. (4) They're geniuses at putting their emotions into words. (5) They possess an insatiable curiosity, constantly asking Why and How. — James J. Kilpatrick

Everything starts and ends with the song, and working with writers and really learning their process and craft was an invaluable experience. — Tommy Mottola

The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everyone else, you have to want to write better than everyone else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen--editors, agents, and publishers--whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards are not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best. — William Zinsser

I know it's difficult in the beginning. But, listen. If you have the impulse to write, do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, and write. — Christy Hall

Real writers write. Period. No, the muse does not come to visit everyday. She's a lazy, precocious flirt. You cannot get into the habit of being "in the mood" to write. No writer on Earth is in the mood to write everyday, but the good ones do it anyway. They fight through their fatigue, their stress, their doubt, and they write. They get the words on the page. Period.
So stop waiting for your muse. Trust me, she sleeps around. — Darynda Jones

Learning the craft as an actor in Los Angeles is a very hard thing to do, in my opinion. We all come from a certain world and when you start learning the craft, you need material to read/study that you can relate to. We do not have too many Latino writers on the West Coast that I was able to relate to (or at least, I didn't know at the time). I came from the streets, so the most published authors had no relation to my world. As soon as I picked up Pinero & Guirgis, it was all over. It was my world, just in a different location. They cracked me open inside and out. — Richard Cabral

An author is similar to an actor. They play many characters in their lives - photographer, nurse, dancer, doctor, writer, etc. As an author, you have to learn your craft, know each and every element to become that character you're writing about to be able to live and breathe what they do. — Mischa Temaul

It's not a problem to be surrounded by other writers if that's the craft that you're doing. I suppose if you get obsessed with the notion of being a writer more than the writing itself, that would be bad. But I live near really smart, thoughtful people who take writing very seriously, and I can meet them for breakfast and talk books. — Phil Klay

The key is in the craft. — A.D. Posey

Good writers practice. They take time to write, crafting and editing a piece until it's just right. They spend hours and days just revising. Good writers take criticism on the chin and say "thank you" to helpful feedback; they listen to both the external and internal voices that drive them. And they use it all to make their writing better. They're resigned to the fact that first drafts suck and that the true mark of a champion is a commitment to the craft. It's not about writing in spurts of inspiration. It's about doing the work, day-in and day-out. Good writers push through because they believe in what they're doing. They understand this is more than a profession or hobby. It's a calling, a vocation. — Jeff Goins

I want to be able to discuss craft but I also want to teach writers to trust their instincts and learn to listen to themselves above all others. — Mary J. Miller

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world. — Charles Frazier

Can we all pause a moment to appreciate the artistry of that sentence? "Sitting casually on the floor, a guard sat ... " That's freaking art right there! Someone nominate this thing for the Hugo Award already! — Jim C. Hines

Trade book publishing is by nature a cottage industry, decentralized, improvisational, personal; best performed by small groups of like-minded people, devoted to their craft, jealous of their autonomy, sensitive to the needs of writers and to the diverse interests of readers. If money were their primary goal, these people would probably have chosen other careers. — Jason Epstein

Great writers zealously learn the craft of their profession so they can release the power and the depth of their imagination and experience. — Leonard Bishop

When a solid first draft of an original tale is complete ... you feel as if you could do anything. — Christy Hall

What about his style?" asked Dalgliesh who was beginning to think that his reading had been unnecessarily restricted.
"Turgid but grammatical. And, in these days, when every illiterate debutante thinks she is a novelist, who am I to quarrel with that? Written with Fowler on his left hand and Roget on his right. Stale, flat and, alas, rapidly becoming unprofitable ... "
"What was he like as a person?" asked Dalgliesh.
"Oh, difficult. Very difficult, poor fellow! I thought you knew him? A precise, self-opinionated, nervous little man perpetually fretting about his sales, his publicity or his book jackets. He overvalued his own talent and undervalued everyone else's, which didn't exactly make for popularity."
"A typical writer, in fact?" suggested Dalgliesh mischievously. — P.D. James

Every word I write is like a drop of my blood. If it's flowed passionately and long, I need time to recover from the emotion spent before I begin a new story. My characters are aspects of my life. I have to respectfully and carefully move between them. — Red Haircrow

Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb. — Dan Alatorre

Give the reader what they want, just not the way they expect it. — William Goldman

Writers are born, not made. We can hone the craft. We need to try to encourage someone and make a dialogue, suggesting ways to do something differently or how to improve. — Alan Zweibel

Nobody wanted me. I just kept writing books and learning my craft. Most writers aren't very good in the beginning. — Phyllis A. Whitney

Like many writers, Hemingway thought of his craft as a trade that he was continually learning and at the mercy of. He told his son Gregory of his own try at writing, "Writing's got to flow and come easy if it's good and this stuff 'smells of the lamp.' You know that old phrase - smells like you've been up all night working on it over a kerosene lamp" (James, — Kathleen Dixon Donnelly

Don't tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass. — Bernard Cornwell

The great thing about 'Justified' is that the writers will craft a scene, but if the actors come up with a great idea, they're 100% for it. — Neal McDonough

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion. — Roman Payne

Where do writers get their ideas from? Anywhere and everywhere.
Nothing is sacred. — Darynda Jones

I love hearing details of writers' craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer. — Antonia Fraser

I should be writing ... — Mur Lafferty

I try to be aware of what I'm concerned about, aware of how I feel about myself in the world, aware of how I feel about the issues of the day, but I guess I don't want to write essays in my head about my craft and maybe it's because I teach and talk about craft of other writers as a reader. I feel the moment I start doing that is when it's going to kill me. — Chang-rae Lee

Don't be afraid of what you're creating. — Christy Hall

Most days, writing simply requires work-ethic, discipline, clarity, focus, time. Other days ... it will demand absolutely everything of you. — Christy Hall

Future writers hide inside books and snort up the craft by enjoyment. They read and learn structure and style. Their curiosity points them to subject matter. — James Ellroy

There are as many routes to writing success as there are writers who got there. My advice, however, applies across the board: read widely, learn the craft by whatever means you can - workshops and writing programs are ideal, but even self-study can work - apply what you learn, and persevere. — Therese Fowler

It takes thirty-three days to write a book
only thirty-three days. remember, writers lie for a living. — Darynda Jones

Lie naked on the table, and let them cut. Criticism is surgery, and humility is the anesthetic that allows you to tolerate it. In the end, the process will make you a stronger, more flexible, and truly creative writer. It will replace attitude with genuine confidence, and empty arrogance with artistry. — Molly Cochran

In barbaric lands like the Americas, writers produced their best work before learning the craft, and nine times out of ten, their book was the strongest, as well as being, in general, the only one they wrote. — Cesar Aira

Writers don't choose their craft; they need to write in order to face the world. — Alice Hoffman

Life has a vendetta against writers. It does everything in it's power to get in the way of our craft. Maybe it thinks we embellish too much? — Hannah Harding

Writers of nonfiction have the right - perhaps even the responsibility - to access the wonders of the writer's craft to make their work interesting and enjoyable. — Sol Stein

This is the same establishment that all those who want, or rather aspire to, to be literary figures of the century, artists, painters and sculptors want acceptance from and approval. They want to be looked up to. Young and upcoming poets must approach their craft with an almost angelic perspective. So many writers are missing a condensed fusion in their writing, they condescend to their audience, the truth is not spoken in their work, they gabble, their words seem to make a hot fuss on the page. What do they gain? They gain this, simply nothing. Poets must assemble and present their work accordingly to how they see fit and should be careful of advice from other writers and editors. Sometimes there can be too much going on in the words that are meant to be given with the best of intentions. — Abigail George

Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background. — Van Wyck Brooks

A good writer reveals beauty in the mundane and truth in tragedy. Words are a tool; a currency of the mind, and the best writers weave passages into our hearts that our bones remember. — Maria Reeves

Invisible prose only!" rules out the sparkling style of [writers] ... For [whom] vivid prose, and the visionary mind it evinces, rich with speculation, insight, and subjectivity, is the craft and offers a unique caliber of truth. Is there any other art form one would praise by saying it's "invisible"? By definition, art transcends the ordinary, calls attention to itself, and offers virtuosity as its calling card. One that makes it possible to do what metaphor does so well: illuminate what can't be wholly understood. — Diane Ackerman

It's good to write badly. Things can only get better. — Alan Dapre

Each time I write, I reaffirm my soul. — Rob Bignell, Editor

Of course, I don't mean to imply that all writers are working in the deep waters that border on the divine. Most writers are just trying to pay the bills, like anyone else - Stephanie Meyers is the literary equivalent of a television evangelist. Fork over twenty bucks and she'll help you forget your troubles for a while. I certainly don't fault her for her success, but I hope she has no illusions about the quality of her craft or the longevity of her efforts. — Kevin Keck

It's been my experience that most writers don't talk about their craft
they just do it — Alfred Lansing

There are a number of writers who believe it is their duty to throw as many curve balls at the reader as possible. To twist and twist again. These are the Chubby Checkers of crime fiction and, while I admire the craft, I think that it can actually work against genuine suspense. — Mark Billingham

On working with other writers: You develop honesty and you can then ask the really embarrassing questions. I have learned so many things I didn't want to know, and they were all a result of interesting interviews for background information. — Dan Alatorre

Writers learn their craft, above all, from the work of other writers. From reading. — Marie Arana

Visual and performing artists produce art that lives in the present world. The art of the writer exists in another dimension. Through strings of words and phrases writers inspire their readers to imagine, to conjure images, to suspend disbelief, to enter a world visible only in their minds. It is in that unseen world where the art of the writer lives. — Mindie Burgoyne

As you write your novel, you gradually start thinking like some of your characters in it. And at times the writer may lose himself completely in some character. — Avijeet Das

If a pen can communicate our thoughts, dreams, and emotions and be the voice of our soul, then ink is the medium that carries the message. — Fennel Hudson

Fiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination. — Luke Taylor

Movies and television may be influencing writers to write more visually, using immediate scenes with specific points of view to put their stories across. But fiction can always accomplish something that visual media will never be able to match.
...
One of the great gifts of literature is that it allows for the expression of unexpressed thoughts: interior monologue. — Renni Browne

Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick. — Lisa Cron

The best writers I've read possess oodles of self-doubt, yet claw their way up with each work and remain humble. Boastful ones, not so much. — Don Roff

Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it. — Christy Hall

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing
and reading
is a solitary business. And it's good to know I'm not alone. — Shannon Celebi

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list. — Umberto Eco

[Referring to passage by Alice Munro] Finally, the passage contradicts a form of bad advice often given young writers
namely, that the job of the author is to show, not tell. Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out
don't tell us a character is happy, show us how she screams "yay" and jumps up and down for joy
when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language. — Francine Prose

I have even taught classes on writing about sex, and I've looked closely at different writers' sex scenes. On the level of craft I've given it a lot of thought. The pitfalls are simple: It can sound clinical or medical, which isn't right, or pornographic, because the characters disappear. — K.M. Soehnlein

If I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now I have your attention. — Lisa Cron

But we [writers] are crucial. That is what I hope you have learned. We listen for and collect and share stories. Without stories there is no nation and no religion and no culture. Without stories of bone and substance and comedy there is only a river of lies, and sweet and delicious ones they are, too. We are the gatherers, the shepherds, the farmers of stories. We wander widely and look for them and gather them and harvest them and share them as food. It is a craft as necessary and nutritious as any other, and if you are going to be good at it you must double your humility and triple your curiosity and quadruple your ability to listen. — Brian Doyle

Where the writing takes place doesn't matter to a publisher, but it matters a great deal to the author. — Fennel Hudson