A great novel is the record of how a character fights with death.
Sometimes writing a novel feels about as rewarding as turning a spit in the fires of hell.
You keep writing because it’s the only way to finish the book.
Give yourself permission to be bad. Write first, polish later.
Don’t give up. I don’t think any other advice works. Writing is one of those things where you just have to do it. There will be far more people to discourage you than to encourage you. The time never comes to you, the inspiration doesn’t come to you. You just sit down and do it.” – James Lee Burke.
When the last dime is gone, I’ll sit on the curb with a pencil and a ten-cent notebook, and start the whole thing all over again.” – Preston Sturges.
Ernest Hemingway had a rather personal way to describe first drafts. To paraphrase, he said all of them are like, ahem, biological waste.
Other men’s sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our back.
Drive thy business or it will drive thee.” – Benjamin Franklin.
Don’t you love that? One of the greatest scientific innovations of all time just came to Townes as he was sitting on a bench in a park. And then he starts “scratching” it out on paper.
It’s quite interesting to note that Townes’s colleagues at Columbia were skeptical of his idea. Niels Bohr, one of the great quantum physicists, and Nobel laureate Isadore Rabi, head of the university’s physics department, told Townes his maser idea would never work and urged him to abandon the project.
Good writers are good readers.
If you’re still stuck, re-watch Misery and imagine that your number one fan insists that you finish by the end of the month.
I was in the house alone. That’s usually the case because I’m writing and my wife is out in the real world doing something of great value and being with actual people. People who are not tied down to a keyboard, monitor and chair calling out to people who aren’t in the house.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. You do that by study.
Luck is where hard work meets opportunity.
The exclamation point is a loud party-goer, demanding attention. Overdone, it can be annoying.
When our characters show us the full fire of that inner battle, we have the makings of great fiction. For whether the choice is ultimately for honor or dishonor, we will see the consequences and the reader will be instructed without being taught.
Get a PHD No, not a doctoral degree. I mean a PHD attitude: Poor, Hungry and Driven.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay.