National Novel Writing Month Quotes

I binge write. I think it's because I started seriously writing by participating in National Novel Writing Month, an online-based challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days. ~ Erin Morgenstern

The reality of a serious writer is a reality of many voices, some of them belonging to the writer, some of them belonging to the world of readers at large. ~ Aberjhani

Art gives its vision to beauty not always recognized. And it surrenders freely
whatever power it possesses to every sincere soul that seeks it. But above all else
it presents us with the gift of ourselves. ~ Aberjhani

All my life I have been trying to learn, to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel and after the five years, lacking a month, I took to finish it, I was still traveling, still a seeker. ~ Carl Sandburg

Those who would like to become writers attend courses on writing poetry and prose and analyze their own work and that of other writers in development. Teachers teach them that talent is not required and that anyone, who wants to be a writer, can do it if they only master the technique of writing and master the formulas of the genre that they choose. With a little brain storming ideas written on cards, as well as designs and plans on the table, one can even write a novel in a month. There is no secret; the whole secret is in the technique, a little research, and the rest is solved by form, according to a formula, in which it is all nicely wrapped up and packaged.
And so, a bestseller is born. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

It seems important to me that beginning writers ponder this - that since 1964, I have never had a book, story or poem rejected that was not later published. If you know what you are doing, eventually you will run into an editor who knows what he/she is doing. It may take years, but never give up. Writing is a lonely business not just because you have to sit alone in a room with your machinery for hours and hours every day, month after month, year after year, but because after all the blood, sweat, toil and tears you still have to find somebody who respects what you have written enough to leave it alone and print it. And, believe me, this remains true, whether the book is your first novel or your thirty-first. ~ Joseph Hansen

IT'S HARDLY a coincidence that "Shipping Out," Wallace's most well-known essay, appeared only a month before Infinite Jest, his most well-known novel, was published. Both are about the same thing (amusing ourselves to death), with different governing données (lethally entertaining movie, lethally pampering leisure cruise). In an interview after the novel came out, Wallace, asked what's so great about writing, said that we're existentially alone on the planet - I can't know what you're thinking and feeling, and you can't know what I'm thinking and feeling - so writing, at its best, is a bridge constructed across the bridge of human loneliness. ~ David Shields

I have time to write 1-2 novels per year, and get roughly novel-sized ideas every month. I have to perform triage on my own writing impulses. ~ Charles Stross

Hello Everyone! My name is Dan Brown and in the course of writing my first novel, some other guy, claiming to be me, had the chutzpah to steal my name and publish a book about some code that apparently became quite popular, so much so in fact that copies of it, as well as subsequent novels by the same guy, now accost me every time I visit a brick & mortar or online bookstore these days. Long story short, when I published my first novel (Roll Over, Hitler!) this past month, I decided to use my full name – Daniel Bruce Brown – which would have pleased my parents to no end had they still been alive, but basically makes me unknown to anyone who knows me by Dan Brown, which has to be, I don't know, at least ten or fifteen people. So, anyway, here I am, hoping to be "discovered" and, in the meantime, hoping to make some new friends among folks who love the written word as much as I do. ~ Daniel Bruce Brown

I think there really is no other way to write a long, serious
novel. You work, shelve it for a while, work, shelve it again,
work some more, month after month, year after year, and then
one day you read the whole piece through and, so far as you
can see, there are no mistakes. (The minute it's published and
you read the printed book you see a thousand.) This tortuous
process is not necessary, I suspect, for the writing of a popular
novel in which the characters are not meant to have depth and complexity, where character A is consistently stingy and character
B is consistently openhearted and nobody is a mass of
contradictions, as are real human beings. But for a true novel
there is generally no substitute for slow, slow baking.
We've all heard the stories of Tolstoy's pains over Anna Karenina,
Jane Austen's over Emma, or even Dostoevsky's over Crime and Punishment, a novel he grieved at having to publish prematurely,though he had worked at it much longer than most popular-fiction writers work at their novels. ~ John Gardner

When I went to the University of Iowa in order to be a writer, I thought, This is the worst way to learn how to write. To sit in a room with a bunch of would-be writers, who want to write the Great American Novel, every one of them, and you read their stories and they read yours, and you're not living a life. I don't like that. I like learning on the job. The character of my work has definitely evolved from the character of my life. ~ Joe Frank

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life. ~ E. M. Forster

Ibn al-Khatib says: Ibn Battutah has a modest share of the sciences. He journeyed to the East in the month of Rajab 725 [1325], travelled through its lands, penetrated into Iraq al-Ajam, then entered India, Sind and China, and returned through Yemen. In India, the king appointed him to the office of qadi. He came away later and returned to the Maghrib [ ... ]. Our Shaykh Abu l-Barakat Ibn al-Balfiqi told us of many strange things which Ibn Battutah had seen. Among them was that he claimed to have entered Constantinople and to have seen in its church twelve thousands bishops. He subsequently crossed the Strait to the Spanish coast [ ... ]. Thereafter the ruler of Fez summoned him and commanded him to commit his travels to writing. ~ Tim Mackintosh-Smith

But the reason that writers like Harlan and Lee don't outline is that they enjoy the serendipity, the surprises that arise when they're not constricted by the steel girdle of an outline. And I get that too. Some of the best plot twists in my work have been ones that I didn't plan on, including the ending to PARANOIA. One of the great pleasures of writing fiction is living in the story so that you "experience" it the way your characters do. ~ Joseph Finder

It is quite beneath the dignity of a person holding a Bachelor of Arts degree to engage in such a vulgar occupation as the writing of novels. ~ Fukuzawa Yukichi

The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. ~ Jose Saramago

Even while I was working on the novel I would also write short stories as relief, just to be in a wieldier world that could negotiated more easily and more quickly. In the novel, I even changed the narrator from a man to a woman. ~ Leni Zumas

How is it possible on the one hand, for example, to behave as if nothing on earth were more important than literature, and on the other fail to see that wherever one looks, people are struggling against hunger and will necessarily consider that the most important thing is what they earn at the end of the month? Because this is where he (the writer) is confronted with a new paradox: while all he wanted was to write for those who are hungry, he now discovers that it is only those who have plenty to eat who have the leisure to take notice of his existence. ~ Stig Dagerman

It's a great euphoria when you reach that writing zone. ~ Paul T. Scheuring

Anyone who has ever tried to write a novel knows what an arduous task it is, undoubtedly one of the worst ways of occupying oneself. You have to remain within yourself all the time, in solitary confinement. It's a controlled psychosis, an obsessive paranoia manacled to work completely lacking in the feather pens and bustles and Venetian masks we would ordinarily associate with it, clothed instead in a butcher's apron and rubber boots, eviscerating knife in hand. You can only barely see from that writerly cellar the feet of passers-by, hear the rapping of their heels. Every so often someone stops and bends down and glances in through the window, and then you get a glimpse of a human face, maybe even exchange a few words. But ultimately the mind is so occupied with its own act, a play staged by the self ofr the self in a hasty, makeshift cabinet of curiosities peopled by author and character, narrator and reader, the person describing and the person described, that feet, shoes, heels, and faces become, sooner or later, mere components of that act. ~ Olga Tokarczuk

I did always want to write. And then, when I left New York, where I was working very steadily in the theater - I had done three Broadway shows in a row and was a bit burnt out - I moved out to L.A. and I was not working very much. I came in cold and I'd work for a week, but then I'd have a month or two off. I thought, "I'm going to go crazy unless I actually do write." Like a lot of things in life, it was a situation that came about by circumstances. ~ Jim Piddock

I would like to carve my novel in a piece of wood. My characters - I would like to have them heavier, more three-dimensional ... My characters have a profession, have characteristics; you know their age, their family situation, and everything. But I try to make each one of those characters heavy, like a statue, and to be the brother of everybody in the world. ~ Georges Simenon

You could use a moth like that as a symbol in a novel, but it was trite, wasn't it? The old moth-to-the-flame image had been used and used again. It was the stuff of amateur poetry. And she, having so little experience crafting a story, would be the most in danger of falling into trite approaches. If she wrote a novel, it probably would be about her father. And the male Luna moth would haunt its pages. Everyone would recognize the work as that of a first novelist. "She wrote about herself through the lens of her father."
The really good novelists, Laura thought, put their fathers, and maybe their mothers too, deeper into the stories. Which, she suddenly thought, might redeem Melville just the littlest bit. ~ L.L. Barkat

Writing a film - more precisely, adapting a book into a film - is basically a relentless series of compromises. The skill, the "art," is to make those compromises both artistically valid and essentially your own ... It has been said before but is worth reiterating: writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film is like swimming in the bath. ~ William Boyd

There you are, Ariadne," said Robin. "The whole plot of your next novel presented to you. All you'll have to do is work in a few false clues, and - of course - do the actual writing. ~ Agatha Christie

I Need a Good Book

I need a good story.
I need a good book.
The kind that explodes
Off the shelf.
I need some good writing,
Alive and exciting,
To contemplate all by myself.

I need a good novel,
I need a good read.
I probably need
Two or three.
I need a good tale
Of love and betrayal
Or perhaps an adventure at sea.

I need a good saga.
I need a good yarn.
A momentous and mightily
Or slight one.
But with thousands and thousands
And thousands of books,
I need someone to tell me
The right one.

-John Lithgow ~ John Lithgow

I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels. ~ Tobias Wolff

The writing in Mission to Paris, sentence after sentence, page after page, is dazzling. If you are a John le Carr fan, this is definitely a novel for you. ~ James Patterson

And this Atlantean Destroyer is now leading the Daimons and sending them out to battle against Acheron, who is just using us and the humans as cannon fodder to protect himself? Really, Kyros, put down the crack pipe ... or go write children's fantasy novels. I'll bet you even know exactly who conspired to kill Kennedy, huh? I'm sure the money from D.B. Cooper is what financed your stunning collection of furniture. (Danger) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Then letters came in but three times a week: indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a girl, the post came in but once a month; - but letters were letters then; and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence, which well-bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed
he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog. ~ Graham Greene

It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind. ~ James Russell Lowell

I strongly believe that the art of the novel works best when the writer identifies with whoever he or she is writing about. Novels in the end are based on the human capacity, compassion, and I can show more compassion to my characters if I write in a first person singular. ~ Orhan Pamuk

It seems to me that the novel is very much alive as a form. Without any question, every epoch has its own forms, and the novel nowadays cannot resemble that of the nineteenth century. In this domain all experiments are justified, and it is better to write something new clumsily than to repeat the old brilliantly. In the nineteenth century, novels dealt with the fate of a person or of a family; this was linked to life in that period. In our time the destinies of people are interwoven. Whether man recognizes it or not, his fate is much more linked to that of many other people than it used to be. ~ Ilya Ehrenburg

The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way. ~ Stephen Rea

I told you; I am Arianna, the Siren, your Guardian, and how is a Guardian supposed to do her job if she is clueless about the Guardianee? ~ Erica Sehyun Song

It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important
and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important. ~ Chinua Achebe

A novel, basically, is writing one sentence - then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence. ~ Young-Ha Kim

As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

When Stephen King elaborated on his inspirations for his novel "Carrie" he draws from a time when he was a young man, and describes his impression when he came upon a statue of Christ on the cross, hanging there in misery, and he thought "If THAT guy ever came back, he probably wouldn't be in a saving mood." ~ Stephen King

Each time I discovered a potential link between one character's story and another's, several more connections would reveal themselves, like a beautiful, complex web spinning itself. ~ Richard Scarsbrook

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. Sometimes you run over a drunk who's lain down and fallen asleep on the warm pavement. I mean, do you keep going, or what? ~ E.L. Doctorow

If you love somebody then tell them how you feel dont be scared of their reaction or rejection life is too short. you should take a chance and if things dont work out as you plan dont worry cuz life moves on and true love will be waiting for you again. ~ Atul Purohit

I havent been doin much comic book writing for the last several years though, as Ive been writing television projects and a novel. ~ Bill Mumy

I don't find perfection especially interesting. Art is not all about refinement and formal accomplishment. It is about passion and imagination and courage and these things that I didn't understand when I was kid being taught the rules. I realized that a novel could be. . .art could be. . . what I wanted to make it if I could pull it off. ~ Steve Erickson

Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or "way," an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious - a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand - and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit. For those who are authentically called to the profession, spiritual profits are enough.
John Gardner ~ Marcy Sheiner

Problem, purpose, conflict, goal. Use them. Think about them while you are in the planning phase of your novel; keep these elements at the back of your mind to guide you while you write. When you have written a scene, make sure they are all there, or that if one or another is missing, it is intentional and the effect is what you want. ~ Phyllis A. Whitney

In the end, for me, the sole single goal is to write the best novel that I can. Whether or not it gets made or gets purchased. ~ Nicholas Sparks

If possible, I'd like to avoid that kind of literary burnout. My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, ~ Haruki Murakami

A writer's life is half ambition and half anxiety, and there has to be both. It is no good writing a novel and feeling fine, and it is no good writing a whole novel feeling miserable. It has to be both, that mixture of anxiety and ambition, and you get that with every novel, but more so when you write about these epics of human suffering. I felt that just as much when I wrote about the Gulag. Every writer knows what that is. The process goes… you have to think: 'This novel I am writing is no good.' Then you have to think: 'All my novels are no good.' And then, when you reach that point, you can begin. ~ Martin Amis