It’s a page on this website, located here. I’ve been collecting informative and witty comments from writers for years. Read More...
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.
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.
It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.
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.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.
No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.
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.
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.
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.

























