Let’s resolve a headache, the one that has plagued writers since…well, the plague. It is: when to use “affect” versus “effect.” Read More...
![]() |
|
|
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.
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.
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
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.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
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.
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.


























