Because every
story begins
with words

video lou stillman’s boxing gym

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Writers & Storytellers: Lou Stillman’s boxing gym.

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

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

Truman Capote

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

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

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Stephen King

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

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

Stan Lee

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.

John Campbell

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

Thomas Jefferson

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

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

Gloria Steinem

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

Sidney Sheldon

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

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

Tom Clancy