So you need to deliver a speech, let’s say 20 minutes long, to salespeople. You’ve got a new product ready to push out to Read More...
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
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 haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.
Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.
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.
Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

























