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10 Quotes About Writing

Posted on 08/11/202007/11/2020 by Ndrw

‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’
– Maya Angelou

‘So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.’
– Dr. Seuss

‘Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.’
– Marcus Fabius Quintilianus

‘Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.’
– E. L. Doctorow

‘Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”’
– C.S. Lewis

‘You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.’
– William S. Burroughs

‘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 neither resist nor understand.’
– George Orwell

‘Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips.’
– M.J. Bush

‘You have to resign yourself to wasting lots of trees before you write anything really good. That’s just how it is. It’s like learning an instrument. You’ve got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot. That’s just part of the learning process.’
– J.K. Rowling

‘This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy and that hard.’
– Neil Gaiman

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Throwback Thursday: 50 Quotes About Writing

Posted on 16/01/202011/01/2020 by Ndrw

Originally posted: 28/01/2018

Well, we’ve already had fifty quotes about fiction in general so today it’s time for another fifty quotes, this time providing advice, encouragement and general reflections on the process of writing. So without further ado…

‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.’ — Douglas Adams
‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ — Maya Angelou
‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ — Ernest Hemingway
‘Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.’ — Mark Twain
‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.’ — Stephen King
‘It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.’ — Robert Hass
‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’ — Anaïs Nin
‘Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.’ — E.L. Doctorow
‘A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.’ — Susan Sontag
‘You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.’ — Madeleine L’Engle
‘If a story is in you it has got to come out.’ — William Faulkner
‘You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.’ — Saul Bellow
‘I’m not a very good writer but I’m an excellent rewriter.’ — James Michener
‘You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.’ — Doris Lessing
‘It is a very cool thing to be a writer.’ — Bryan Hutchinson
‘You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.’ — Ray Bradburry
‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ – Toni Morrison
‘Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.’ — Louis L’Amour
‘Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.’ — Mark Twain
‘The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday.’ — David Schlosser
‘Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips.’ — M.J. Bush
‘Growing up is highly overrrated. Just be an author.’ — Neil Gaiman
‘Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days.’ — J.K. Rowling
‘What doesn’t kill us gives us something to write about.’ — Julie Wright
‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’ — W. Somerset Maugham
‘When asked “how do you write?” I invariably answer “one word at a time.”‘ — Stephen King
‘Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.’ — Isaac Asimov
‘Writing is show business for shy people.’ — Lee Child
‘It is perfectly okay to write garbage –as long as you edit brilliantly.’ — C.J. Cherryh
‘If you’re writing stuff, you’re a writer. If you’re not writing stuff, you’re not a writer. If you publish ten thousand best sellers, all of which get made into films, then stop writing, you’re no longer a writer… Similarly, if you are writing with any kind of regularity, you are a real writer. You might be a professional or only an amateur, but you are a writer. Really.’ — A. Ferguson
‘If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.’ — Martin Luther
‘Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.’ — William Wordsworth
‘Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.’ — Philip José Farmer
‘I write to find out what I’m talking about.’ — Edward Albee
‘Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.’ — Raymond Chandler
‘You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.’ — Annie Proulx
‘Don’t be a writer. Be writing.’ — William Faulkner
‘Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.’ — Katrina Monroe
‘Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.’ — Natalie Goldberg
‘To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.’ — Aristotle
‘You can make anything by writing.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.’ — Joss Whedon
‘I need solitude for my writing; not “like a hermit” — that wouldn’t be enough — but like a dead man.’ — Franz Kafka
‘Writers don’t make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don’t work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck’s book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man’s stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more.’ — Donald Miller
‘Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.’ — George R.R. Martin
‘A word after a word after a word is power.’ — Margaret Atwood
‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’ — Thomas Mann
‘Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.’ — David McCullough
‘Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.’ — Ralph Keyes

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ATTENTION AUTHORS:

Every Tuesday, I post a new edition of Spotlight: a short post which shines a proverbial spotlight on a published novel or collection of short fiction. If you would like to have your book considered for a future edition of Spotlight, drop us an e-mail including a short synopsis of your book and a link to where we can buy it. Better yet, send me a copy of your book and I can include a mini-review.

I’m still looking to interview fiction authors here on Penstricken, especially new or indie authors. Whether it’s books, plays, comics or any other kind of fiction, if you’ve got something written, I want to hear about it. If you’re interested in having your work featured on Penstricken, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest.

Please be advised that due to a recent surge in interest, I am presently committed to a significant number of reviews/interviews over the next couple of months. If you would like an interview or review, I would still love to hear from you, though it is unlikely that I will be able to begin work immediately.

You can check out our previous interviews here:

50 Quotes About Writing

Posted on 28/01/201826/01/2018 by Ndrw

‘I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.’ — Douglas Adams
‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ — Maya Angelou
‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ — Ernest Hemingway
‘Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.’ — Mark Twain
‘If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.’ — Stephen King
‘It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.’ — Robert Hass
‘We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.’ — Anaïs Nin
‘Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.’ — E.L. Doctorow
‘A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.’ — Susan Sontag
‘You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.’ — Madeleine L’Engle
‘If a story is in you it has got to come out.’ — William Faulkner
‘You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.’ — Saul Bellow
‘I’m not a very good writer but I’m an excellent rewriter.’ — James Michener
‘You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.’ — Doris Lessing
‘It is a very cool thing to be a writer.’ — Bryan Hutchinson
‘You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.’ — Ray Bradburry
‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ – Toni Morrison
‘Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.’ — Louis L’Amour
‘Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.’ — Mark Twain
‘The only writer to whom you should compare yourself is the writer you were yesterday.’ — David Schlosser
‘Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips.’ — M.J. Bush
‘Growing up is highly overrrated. Just be an author.’ — Neil Gaiman
‘Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days.’ — J.K. Rowling
‘What doesn’t kill us gives us something to write about.’ — Julie Wright
‘There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’ — W. Somerset Maugham
‘When asked “how do you write?” I invariably answer “one word at a time.”‘ — Stephen King
‘Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.’ — Isaac Asimov
‘Writing is show business for shy people.’ — Lee Child
‘It is perfectly okay to write garbage –as long as you edit brilliantly.’ — C.J. Cherryh
‘If you’re writing stuff, you’re a writer. If you’re not writing stuff, you’re not a writer. If you publish ten thousand best sellers, all of which get made into films, then stop writing, you’re no longer a writer… Similarly, if you are writing with any kind of regularity, you are a real writer. You might be a professional or only an amateur, but you are a writer. Really.’ — A. Ferguson
‘If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.’ — Martin Luther
‘Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.’ — William Wordsworth
‘Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.’ — Philip José Farmer
‘I write to find out what I’m talking about.’ — Edward Albee
‘Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.’ — Raymond Chandler
‘You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.’ — Annie Proulx
‘Don’t be a writer. Be writing.’ — William Faulkner
‘Writing is like giving yourself homework, really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.’ — Katrina Monroe
‘Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.’ — Natalie Goldberg
‘To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.’ — Aristotle
‘You can make anything by writing.’ — C.S. Lewis
‘I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.’ — Joss Whedon
‘I need solitude for my writing; not “like a hermit” — that wouldn’t be enough — but like a dead man.’ — Franz Kafka
‘Writers don’t make any money at all. We make about a dollar. It is terrible. But then again we don’t work either. We sit around in our underwear until noon then go downstairs and make coffee, fry some eggs, read the paper, read part of a book, smell the book, wonder if perhaps we ourselves should work on our book, smell the book again, throw the book across the room because we are quite jealous that any other person wrote a book, feel terribly guilty about throwing the schmuck’s book across the room because we secretly wonder if God in heaven noticed our evil jealousy, or worse, our laziness. We then lie across the couch facedown and mumble to God to forgive us because we are secretly afraid He is going to dry up all our words because we envied another man’s stupid words. And for this, as I said, we are paid a dollar. We are worth so much more.’ — Donald Miller
‘Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.’ — George R.R. Martin
‘A word after a word after a word is power.’ — Margaret Atwood
‘A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.’ — Thomas Mann
‘Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.’ — David McCullough
‘Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.’ — Ralph Keyes

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Be sure to leave us a wee comment if you enjoyed it and don’t forget to ‘like’ this post and follow us so you never miss another post. You can also follow Penstricken on Twitter and like Penstricken on Facebook, if that’s what inverts your commas.

Until next time!

ARE YOU AN AUTHOR?

I’m looking for authors (especially, but not limited to, new and/or indie authors) whose work I can feature here on Penstricken over the coming year. It will simply take the form of a quick Q&A about yourself and your work via private message or e-mail and, of course, a link to where we can all get a copy of your work.

I’m open to interviewing authors of almost any kind of story, provided your work is complete, original and of course, fictional. I will not consider individual short stories/micro-fictions, however I am happy to feature published anthologies or entire blog-sites of micro-fiction, provided you are the sole author.

If you’re interested, or want to know more, be to sure to drop us an e-mail or message us on Facebook/Twitter.

50 Quotes About Fiction

Posted on 19/11/201718/11/2017 by Ndrw

“I like telling stories.” — Hunter Parrish
“All fiction has to have a certain amount of truth in it to be powerful.” — George R.R. Martin
“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.” — GK Chesterton
“The best fiction is geared towards conflict. We learn most about our characters through tension, when they are put up against insurmountable obstacles. This is true in real life.” — Sufjan Stevens
“Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.” — Francis Bacon
“The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.” — Antony Beevor
“The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity.” — E.L. Doctorow
“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” — Mark Twain
“Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.” — Virginia Wolf
“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.” — Simon Weil
“Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again. As soon as you have an idea that changes some small part of the world you are writing science fiction. It is always the art of the possible, never the impossible.” — Ray Bradbury
“Human kind has been telling stories forever and will be telling stories forever.” — Jim Crace
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” — Albert Camus
“I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which ‘Escape’ is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” — Oscar Wilde
“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.” — Doris Lessing
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” — Albert Einstein
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“While we read a novel, we are insane—bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices… Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
“It’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” — Ken Kesey
“Fiction wouldn’t be much fun without its fair share of scoundrels, and they have to live somewhere.” — Jasper Fforde
“General fiction is pretty much about ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else” — Marvin Minsky
“Fiction just makes it all more interesting. Truth is so boring.” — Charlaine Harris
“The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Nothing – and everything – about it is real.” — Todd Strasser
“Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own “real” world in a fresh and truth-bearing light.” — Leonard S. Marcus
“[Characters] are the beating heart of any story that’s worth reading. All my favourite stories, whether they be books, films, TV shows, comics, computer games, or any other kind of story you care to mention, feature compelling characters. Characters who are not just believable people (though that is vitally important), but who are intriguing, unusual, captivating and – most importantly – unique. Their distinctive qualities makes them memorable, interesting and appealing (even if they are the most sinister villains) and they don’t slot too neatly into cliched archetypes – damsels in distress, moustache twirling villains, reluctant heroes or any other such thing.” — A. Ferguson
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.” — Terry Pratchett
“Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life” — Martin Amis
“History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.” — Victor Hugo
“Even in the world of make-believe there have to be rules. The parts have to be consistent and belong together.” — Daniel Keyes
“A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.” — Isaac Babel
“There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.” — Orson Scott Card
“The best fiction is true.” — Kinky Friedman
“To write something out of one’s own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far in between. Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.” — Stephen Leacock
“Just as pilots gain practice with flight simulators, people might acquire social experience by reading fiction.” — Raymond A. Mar
“It’s never too late – in fiction or in life – to revise.” — Nancy Thayer
“All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‘the plot.'” — Margaret Atwood
“I love fiction because in fiction you go into the thoughts of people, the little people, the people who were defeated, the poor, the women, the children that are never in history books.” — Isabel Allende
“I mostly associated video game storytelling with unforgivable clumsiness, irredeemable incompetence – and suddenly, I was finding the aesthetic and formal concerns I’d always associated with fiction: storytelling, form, the medium, character. That kind of shocked me.” — Tom Bissell
“When a writer is already stretching the bounds of reality by writing within a science fiction or fantasy setting, that writer must realise that excessive coincidence makes the fictional reality the writer is creating less ‘real.'” — Jane Lindskold
“In the best works of fiction, there’s no moustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy’s got his reasons.” — Lin-Manuel Miranda
“I just had a crazy, wild imagination all my life, and science fiction is the greatest outlet for me.” — Steven Spielberg
“The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably ‘Doctor Who.’ What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.” — Terry Pratchett
“I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.” — Taiye Selasi
“A play is fiction– and fiction is fact distilled into truth.” — Edward Albee
“All my fiction starts from a feeling of unique perception, the pressure of a secret, a story that needs to be told.” — Barry Unsworth
“Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.” — Arthur C. Clarke
“Fiction is too beautiful to be about just one thing. It should be about everything.” — Arundhati Roy
“I can make up stories with the best of them. I’ve been telling stories since I was a little kid” — Rabih Alameddine

Until next time!