Self-publishing authors are rocking Hollywood!

22 May, 2017

How do you get known? Consider the example of e-book author Mark Dawson. His first novel sold poorly until Amazon suggested that he offer it for free. BOOM! Fifty thousand downloads in one weekend. That built name recognition and an audience for the second e-book. Pretty neat strategy, eh? The resulting name recognition led to a TV series deal. Read all about it at The Guardian.

Self-publishing authors are rocking Hollywood!

May 22, 2017May 9, 2025

How do you get known? Consider the example of e-book author Mark Dawson. His first novel sold poorly until Amazon suggested that he Read More...

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.

Will Rogers

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

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.

John Legend

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

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.

Anton Chekhov

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.

John Irving

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.