10 Tips from Great Writers to Inspire or Instruct
Biff Barnes
“There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.”
Doris Lessing
Courtesy of Arya Ziai under Creative Commons“The first draft of anything is shit.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
Franz Kafka
“The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written.”
Joyce Carol Oates
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
Stephen King
“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”
Jack Kerouac
“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”
Hunter S. Thompson
“Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.”
Allegra Goodman
“Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.”
Ray Bradbury
“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”
Virginia Woolf