Stay true to your brand. So to speak.

25 Feb, 2024

I was nearly done reading a magazine about the world's best whiskeys when I came upon this. I began laughing, and I was stone cold sober (I seldom drink). Are you a writer? Married to a writer? Are you a wannabe writer? Do you have a writer friend? Hop on over to Total Wine & More, swipe the gold card and pick up a bottle of this fine Irish whiskey. A perfect gift. Unless they don't drink at all. You're welcome.

Stay true to your brand. So to speak.

February 25, 2024May 9, 2025

I was nearly done reading a magazine about the world’s best whiskeys when I came upon this. I began laughing, and I was stone Read More...

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

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

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

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.

J.K. Rowling

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

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.

Harlan Ellison

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.

Roddy Doyle

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

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.

Robert McKee

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

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

Jodi Picoult

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.

George Singleton

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.