Ytvideo

Video: When to use rain, rein and reign.

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.

Bob Dylan

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

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.

E. L. Doctorow

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

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

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

Sidney Sheldon

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

Dan Poynter

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

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

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

E. B. White

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

Stan Lee

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.