I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading…if you’re not suffering from reader’s block:
I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading…if you’re not suffering from reader’s block:
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 get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.
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.
I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
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.
If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.
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.