Because every
story begins
with words

Eight secrets to writing a low-budget movie

Video: Eight secrets to writing a low-budget movie.

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

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.

Mark Twain

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.

Truman Capote Quote

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

Joseph Conrad

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

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

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

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

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

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

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

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

Thomas Wolfe

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

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

Oscar Wilde