I’m envious of this fellow’s literary output. Chet Cunningham died March 14th, 2017, at age 88. He wrote — and this Read More...
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.
I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.
If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.
What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

























