Writer Advice Quotes

Writers, like priests, should have compassion ... and a sensitivity to pain ... ~ John Geddes

Writer advice ... Write. Finish things. Go for walks. Read a lot & outside your comfort zone. Stay interested. Daydream. Write. ~ Neil Gaiman

. . . [E]very single writer I met likened writing for television to one thing--laying track for an incoming speeding train. The story is the track and you gotta keep laying it down because of the train. That train is production. You keep writing, you keep laying track down, no matter what, because the train of production is coming toward you--no matter what. Every eight days, the crew needs to being to prepare a new episode--find locations, build sets, design costumes, find props, plan shots. And every eight days after that, the crew needs to film a new episode. Every eight days. Eight days to prep. Eight days to shoot. Eight days, eight days, eight days, eight days. Which means every eight days, that crew needs a brand-new script. And my job is to damn well provide them with one. Every. Eight. Days. That train of production is a'coming. Every eight days that crew on that soundstage better have something to shoot. Because the worst thing you can do is halt or derail production and cost the studio hundreds of thousands of dollars while everyone waits. That is how you go from being a TV writer to being a failed TV writer. ~ Shonda Rhimes

I can give advice to anyone interested in writing in one word: Read! I think it's much more important to be a reader than to be a writer! ~ Linda Sue Park

If you can quit, then quit. If you can't quit, you're a writer. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Listen to your own thoughts and feelings very carefully, be aware of your observations, and learn to value them. When you're a teenager - and even when you're older - lots of people will try to tell you what to think and feel. Try to stand still inside all of that and hear your own voice. It's yours and only yours, it's unique and worth of your attention, and if you cultivate it properly, it might just make you a writer. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

You are not stress...you are experiencing stress. You are not anxiety...you are experiencing anxiety. You are not fear...you are experiencing fear. You can recognize the fact that you are not your emotions and simply accept the experience of that emotion and move right through it. ~ Mike Basevic

Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn't do, its extra letters and syllables don't make a writer seem smarter; rather, using utilize makes you seem either like a pompous twit or like someone so insecure that she'll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look sophisticated. The same is true for the noun utilization, for vehicle as used for car, for residence as used for house, for presently, at present, at this time, and at the present time as used for now, and so on. What's worth remembering about puff-words is something that good writing teachers spend a lot of time drumming into undergrads: "formal writing" does not mean gratuitously fancy writing; it means clean, clear, maximally considerate writing. ~ David Foster Wallace

One of the awful things about writing when you are a Christian is that for you the ultimate reality is the Incarnation, the present reality is the Incarnation, and nobody believes in the Incarnation; that is, nobody in your audience. My audience are the people who think God is dead. At least these are the people I am conscious of writing for. ~ Flannery O'Connor

So my own suspicion is that the attorney has stopped this prosecution because part of her defence was to question legality and that would have brought his advice into the public domain again and there was something fishy about the way in which he said war was legal. ~ Clare Short

There is no good or bad author; there is only one kind of an author, that who connects with the readers. ~ Saru Singhal

You can have a dark heart and be a writer, but you can't have a black one.. ~ John Geddes

Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go. ~ A. L. Kennedy

Do not compete with anyone. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The one thing an aspiring writer must understand is that it's hard. If you think it's not hard, you're not doing it right. ~ Gene Weingarten

I feel like one can have all of that as a writer; you're writing, you're reading, you're talking to interesting and intelligent people. Your life is structured around whatever book you're writing, and so is your reading and so are many of your conversations. ~ Sheila Heti

You must go ask Gi Bu Sen for advice. He is the only one who knows what sort of monster we face. These are his children, coming to torment us. He will recognize them. I'm having the new samples prepared. Between the three, he will know. "

"There's no other way?"

"Our only other choice is to begin quarantining the city, and then the riots will begin and there will be nothing left to save. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

In those days, long before, a view over the rooftops of Paris was an unaffordable luxury. The apartment he had shared with a mousy young writer from Laon had a view of the Jardin de Luxembourg – if he stuck his head out of the window as far as it would go and twisted it to the left, a smudge of green foliage appeared in the corner of one eye. That had been his best apartment to date. They had decorated it in the 'Bohemian' style of the 1830s : a few volumes of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo, a Phrygian cap, an Algerian hookah, a skull on a broomstick handle (from the brother of a friend, Charles Toubin, who was an intern at one of the big hospitals) and, of course, a window box of geraniums, which was not only pretty but also illegal. (Death by falling window box was always high up the official list of fatalities.) For a proper view of Paris, they visited Henry's painter friends who lived in a warren of attic rooms near the Barriere d'Enfer and called themselves the Water-Drinkers. When the weather was fine and the smell of their own squalor became unbearable, they clambered onto the roof and sat on the gutters and ridges, sketching chimneyscapes, and sending up more smoke from their pipes than the fireplaces below.
Three of the Water-Drinkers had since died of various illnesses known collectively as 'lack of money'. When the last of the three was buried, in the spring of 1844, Henry and the others had found themselves at the graveside without a sou to give a gravedigger. ' ~ Graham Robb

If you want to stretch out your life, here's my advice: Look about for new experiences, lots of them. It slows down time. ~ Franny Billingsley Chime

I've laid out a plan for how we keep people safe here at home, and I've laid out a plan of how we wage war and win by denying ISIS territory overseas. We must deny them their territory because the territory that they've conquered because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama declared victory in Iraq and against every generals advice withdrew all of our troops, leaving a vacuum, weaponry, territory for ISIS to conquer, that territory, their caliphate, is that from which they draw legitimacy, potency, credibility. We have to deny them that territory. ~ Carly Fiorina

Literary theories will not make a writer write. ~ Allen Wier

Give yourself to these great works of art. They suffice for a lifetime. ~ Iris Murdoch

For me the path to the literary goes through the non - literary. For this reason it surprises me that I am a writer, or that people speak of me as a writer. I'm flattered, but I don't quite believe it. ~ Gustavo Perez Firmat

The key to a good marriage: laugh together, cry together, strive together: do everything together. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer - for there's something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity - to write, I write; we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing. ~ Lorrie Moore

I'm a producer, writer, director. I'm putting everything together very fast, and I'm strong and focused on making the next film as fast as possible. From one film to the other, I'm getting better. I'm learning - that's my style. ~ Malgorzata Szumowska

Only the writers can change or fix the past by going back to edit old works ~ Munia Khan

It's not a religion, it's a relationship!'
Without the religion, without the archaic and flawed holy texts, there wouldn't be anything for you to manufacture a 'relationship' with. Without the wars and forced conversions key to the religion's spread across the globe, it may have died out long ago like so many others have. If that were the case, you wouldn't know the characters of Jesus or God or Muhammad or any of the tales and myths associated with a particular faith. Religions concern themselves with preserving and worshiping these myths as realities, without regard to substantial evidence to the contrary. ~ David G. McAfee

A writer is someone who has a one-man tent in the desert and occasionally he sees the footprint of an other writer - in the form of a review or something. ~ Alan Lightman

I think the ultimate thing in some ways for any writer is to work on a character who's going to have a life for a long time. ~ Peter Gould

A person with a victim complex is incapable of achieving his goal without someone's assistance, advice and prompts ~ Sunday Adelaja

Ms. Ginsberg. I wonder if you can help me. I have a legal question," Felicity Mason said. Great. I hated giving out free legal advice at parties, but at that moment, I would have drafted her will in crayon on a cocktail napkin to get away from Cole. ~ N.M. Silber

Spiritual purpose and mission can overcome weaknesses in character because God redeems our characters... ~ Gary Thomas

Advice to my unborn daughter: Don't believe him when he tells you he only gets so angry because he cares. ~ Nitya Prakash

The world's most funniest and easiest thing is to give an advice ... ~ Chetan Bhagat

I wanted to be a writer, but I kind of wanted to be a fiction writer someday, like 20 - 25 years down the line. I never thought I'd write a nonfiction memoir about Iraq. ~ Matt Gallagher

The pages afforded glimpses into my soul where I'd hidden it, behind masks of paper and ink. ~ Rachel L. Schade