Humor Writing Craft Quotes

Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~ Gene Fowler

If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation, does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at the cats. The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer will be courteous as well as responsive. Since you are out of sympathy with cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the dedicatory ceremonies of a cat hospital. But bear in mind that your opinion of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker. Try to keep things straight. ~ William Strunk Jr.

I'm sure that writing isn't a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can't be taught, it can't be what you use in teaching. ~ Robert Lowell

On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost all of us will produce a lot of really lousy stories before we start to get good. (Not all of us will choose to publish those lousy stories, but that's a whole separate discussion ... ) ~ Jim C. Hines

My creativity keeps me from starving. Humanity keeps my life mundane. Loving secures my love for life, but my imagination keeps me sane. ~ F.K. Preston

I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out of me with steel pipes. ~ Patton Oswalt

Learn from your rejections and polish your craft. Write for the sheer joy of being creative. ~ Jonathan Weeks

As an author I'm in my head all day and I worry that I lose touch with reality. But then my dog pees on my shoe and I know I've found it again. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing
and reading
is a solitary business. And it's good to know I'm not alone. ~ Shannon Celebi

Like Flannery O'Connor, McCorkle's genius is to give us both philosophical speculation and a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters. Great writing, poignancy, humor, wisdom-all are in abundance here. Jill McCorkle is one of the South's greatest writers; she is also one of America's. ~ Ron Rash

I recommend writing standing up from time to time. It's easier to dance when you finish writing. ~ Diego Ramos

Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction can be difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt. ~ Stephen King

If I could split myself into five people, I would still be behind on my writing schedule. I see now why James Patterson cloned himself so many times. ~ Peter James West

I'll just say right here that whoever thought up the idea of paying dead white authors by the word should have a special place in hell with the rest of the sadists. ~ Heather W. Petty

My writing isn't a career or a craft or a hobby or anything like that. It is more like a tiny annex to my life, a little crawl space in which I occasionally end up by accident in the dark. ~ Gary Lutz

There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof I
hope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not
understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound
is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence
is printed in a different character shall be judged to contain something
extraordinary either of wit or sublime. ~ Jonathan Swift

The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers. ~ David Sedaris

I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in the English language that didn't sound pretentious or ditzy. ~ Pat Conroy

I can be really silly when I'm not actually writing silliness, and I have to rein that in. Pynchon, in my opinion, sometimes tells elaborate shaggy dog stories just to work up to a pun or punch line. My challenge is to use humor and wordplay to reinforce the emotional core of the novel. ~ Mary Kay Zuravleff

If you are serious, and you want to make a living as an author, then you need to hustle. Period. If you can't make that quality, then you need to concentrate on your craft and practice more.
One other thing, quality comes with practice. If you are prolific, then you become a better writer because you are writing. The more you do anything the better at it you will become. So in a way, quantity does add to quality. ~ Larry Correia

I think it's important to really press on with the song writing and just go with it. There's no code, there's no craft ... it's just let yourself shine through your music. If it's meant to be loved and heard, it'll happen. ~ Chantal Kreviazuk

Meredith,' interposed Celia, 'makes one of his women, Emilia in England, say that poetry is like talking on tiptoe; like animals in cages, always going to one end and back again. ~ Harold Frederic

When you're writing a novel, you're still telling a story. But you're telling it very differently. It's a craft like anything else. ~ Howard Gordon

The dull people decided years and years ago, as everyone knows, that novel-writing was the lowest species of literary exertion, and that novel reading was a dangerous luxury and an utter waste of time. ~ Wilkie Collins

You need to work at the craft of songwriting, but not only the craft. When I see people working both on themselves and the craft, and they combine those things ... I just go, That's just fabulous. ~ Fred Eaglesmith

Don't be afraid to get off the internet, the answers aren't all there. You may have to ask a cop about the kickback from a shotgun, or how sweaty they get in summer wearing body armor. Or what color blood is in the moonlight, or the vibrations through a serrated knife's handle you feel in your fingers when you are hacking through somebody's neck and hit cartilage. ~ Dan Alatorre

Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren't too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent. A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of a new poem aloud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet. So it maybe that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process. ~ Francine Prose

Mischief and craft are plainly seen to be characteristics of this creature. - Claudius Aelianus, third century A.D., writing about the octopus ~ Peter Godfrey-Smith

A writer will always be a writer. It's not a choice, it's a destiny. ~ Stephanie Lennox

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle. ~ Mickey Spillane

Part of my soul goes into each quote I write. A book of my quotes can be yours for just $19.99. ~ Ryan Lilly

We all craft a story we can live with. The one that makes ourselves easier to live with. This is not the one worth writing. To write your story, you must face a truer version of it. You must look at the parts that hurt, that do not flatter or comfort you. That do not spare you the trouble of knowing what made you, and what into. I used to wonder if my own difficulty in doing this made me a hypocrite. Now, I'm not sure I believe in hypocrites. We often prescribe for others the thing we most need. It is part of how we learn. ~ Melissa Febos

New Rule: Gun-control people have to stop pressuring Starbucks to ban guns. I want my gun nuts overcaffeinated, twitchy, and accident-prone. That way, the problem will take care of itself. Plus, if just one gun nut kills just one pseudo-intellectual writing a screenplay-slash-graphic-novel on his iPad, natural selection is doing its job. ~ Bill Maher

La dernière chose qu'on trouve en faisant un ouvrage est de savoir celle qu'il faut mettre la première. (The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.) ~ Blaise Pascal

Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and, further, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies. ~ Valerie Solanas

And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now. ~ Nicholas Stoller

I killed it," Athan lamented. "I am a fool." His righteous anger, his arguments, his adoration for the being who claimed Eldaloth's name faded and disintegrated with all the suffering life behind him. A poisonous dread seeped as deep into his soul as the exultant honor and pride he had felt just minutes before. The vast gap between the two emotions a crater into which his very soul plummeted in free-fall. ~ Brian K. Fuller

Well-developed characters will ruin your writing plans every time. You may think you know where you're going with a story, but they have other ideas. ~ Quinn Anderson

With reporting, if you work hard, you can usually pull something out. But writing humor doesn't respond to working hard, necessarily. I mean, you could just sit there and look at the page all day and maybe something will come. ~ Ian Frazier

I'm 100% certain of the quality of story I'm writing until I finish the outline and actually begin to write. At this point, I'm 100% certain the story sucks and I will never show it to another living soul. Until I type "THE END." At this point, I'm 50% certain it sucks, 50% certain it's brilliant, and 100% certain if I don't show it to someone I will spontaneously combust. ~ Renee Miller

On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges. ~ Tom Robbins

Love how editing makes you more confident with your book ...but also makes you want to set it on fire at the same time. ~ Kira Hawke

I write by ear. I tried writing with the typewriter, but I found it too unwieldy ~ Groucho Marx

Writing is hard. Writing that is good, writing that is powerful enough to evoke a change or an authentic emotion or even just an idea in another human being is about as mysterious as an alchemical recipe, but there are a few known ingredients. Craft? Yes, absolutely. Devotion? A load - yes! Humility? Not vital, I suppose, but all my favorites include at least a dash. Before those can be added to the cauldron though, you must have a base of Honesty. Honesty is difficult to find in public spaces these days (and getting harder every goddamn day) but if you're quiet, and patient, you can usually find some hidden in your room somewhere. (It helps to turn off the lights, for some reason.) Problem is, Honesty is invariably bound to Vulnerability and the only thing that cuts the bitterness of Vulnerability is Courage. And Courage?
Well. Courage is the hardest thing of all. ~ Kelly Sue DeConnick

Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness ... ~ Charles Bukowski

The hard part is putting one word after another. ~ Jo Linsdell

Fiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination. ~ Luke Taylor

Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day. ~ Lemony Snicket

I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private. ~ Amy Tan