Because every
story begins
with words

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Video: Professional Writers – How we got a client to pay up.

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

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

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

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

Christopher Hampton

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

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 writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

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

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

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

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

Stan Lee

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

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

Stephen Wright

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

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

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.

John Irving