It was just curiosity. And the top result was for a list of 10 compiled by writer Nicole Bianchi on her website! If you’re a Read More...
If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.
No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.
I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.
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 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.
Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
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.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

























