Writer Guides Quotes

The joy of reading is in discovery; a good writer creates, "gaps, spaces, and absences," in a richly layered text. He/she creates a desire in the reader to strive for meaning. Paradoxically, the writer guides the reader, but allows them some flexibility to recreate the text, thereby putting their own unique interpretation on what they have read. ~ Suzy Davies

As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story ~ Richard Yates

Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone. More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp. It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind. ("Mad House") ~ Richard Matheson

CATHERINE'S INTRIGUE
"Paige Edwards is a writer readers will want more of. Her exciting debut novel is destined to lead the way to more enjoyable books."
Jennie Hansen, Meridian Magazine ~ Paige Edwards

Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I've mentioned, of course, are original, but it's important to me that every book that I do be really a completely fresh and new look at the world. And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can't really depend upon what you've done with previous books. ~ Alan Lightman

I'm at the mercy of others because I'm not a director. I'm not a producer. I'm not a writer. ~ Julianne Moore

When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal. ~ Nick Tosches

Making 'Fargo' for FX has been the highlight of my career. A writer can search his or her whole career for a network partner who truly understands and encourages their vision. For me, the search is over. ~ Noah Hawley

But then in all his words if not deeds Jefferson was so beautifully human, so eminently vague, so entirely dishonest but not in any meretricious way. Rather it was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers. Proclaiming the unalienable rights of man for everyone (excepting slaves, Indians, women and those entirely without property), Jefferson tried to seize the Floridas by force, dreamed of a conquest of Cuba, and after his illegal purchase of Louisiana sent a military governor to rule New Orleans against the will of its inhabitants. ~ Gore Vidal

The idea of being productive, the idea of producing many books is going to lead you toward you becoming a better and better writer. ~ Walter Mosley

Society places the writer so far beyond the pale that society does not regard the writer at all. ~ Annie Dillard

THE WRITER can get free of his writing only by using it, that is, by reading oneself. As if the aim of writing were to use what is already written as a launching pad for reading the writing to come. Moreover, what he has written is read in the process, hence constantly modified by his reading. The book is an unbearable totality. I write against a background of facets. ~ Edmond Jabes

When I touch you, it makes me trembling.
I feel like I've lost myself, existentially.
Your lips on mine makes me feel like
I'm flying across the universe, without aimlessly. ~ Tamara Stamenkovic

Cable boxes are, almost without exception, awful. They're under-powered computers running very badly designed software. Their channel guides are slow, poorly laid out, and usually riddled with ads. ~ Alex Pareene

There seems little or no hope for the adult writer who produces sentences like these: "Her cheeks were thick and smooth and held a healthy natural red color. The heavy lines under them, her jowls, extended to the intersection of her lips and gave her a thick-lipped frown most of the time." The phrase "Her cheeks were thick and smooth" is normal English, but "[Her cheeks] held a healthy natural red color" is elevated, pseudo-poetic. The word "held" faintly hints at personification of "cheeks," and "healthy natural red color" is clunky, stilted, slightly bookish. The second sentence contains similar mistakes. The diction level of "extended to the intersection of her lips" is high and formal, in ferocious conflict with the end of the sentence, which plunges to the colloquial "most of the time. ~ John Gardner

Bloomsbury lost Fry, in 1934, and Lytton Strachey before him, in January 1932, to early deaths. The loss of Strachey
was compounded by Carrington's suicide just two months after, in March. Another old friend, Ka Cox, died of a heart attack in 1938. But the death, in 1937, of Woolf 's nephew Julian, in the Spanish Civil War, was perhaps the
bitterest blow. Vanessa found her sister her only comfort: 'I couldn't get on at all if it weren't for you' (VWB2 203). Julian, a radical thinker and aspiring writer, campaigned all his life against war, but he had to be dissuaded by his
family from joining the International Brigade to fight Franco. Instead he worked as an ambulance driver, a role that did not prevent his death from shrapnel wounds. Woolf 's Three Guineas, she wrote to his mother, was
written 'as an argument with him ~ Jane Goldman

If you could have a famous writer, dead or alive, write an obituary for you and really puff you up to have been something you weren't, perhaps, or otherwise take liberties with your memory, what writer would you choose? ~ Padgett Powell

I've come to the possible conclusion that being a comedic writer/director is like running track. You do it for a certain amount of time and then you have to stop. Or you at least have to accept that you're not going to be at the top of your game. And that's OK. ~ David Wain

Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing; the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin. ~ William Safire

What I am interested in, what I write and care about, exists in the slow lane, somewhere between hand-ploughed fields and a pint of real ale. ~ Fennel Hudson

How we interact in our world that we inhabit determines how much happiness human beings enjoy. The ego guides human beings in performing their practical activities, and egotistical utility in turn motivates human behavior. An inflated ego can cause human beings to live in a corrupt and unethical manner that is hostile to other humans and the environment. A person's passions can imprison them. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

As a writer you can and should expect to hear conflicting responses to your story. ~ John Dufresne

TV is where a writer can write his novel. ~ Richard LaGravenese

Saul Bellow once said, 'A writer is a reader who has moved to emulation' - which I think is true. I just started writing and made that jump from reader to writer and learned how hard it was, but also how much fun it was - losing myself in these imaginary worlds. ~ Stewart O'Nan

A good writer wants from us - or has no right to ask more than - intelligence, good faith and time. ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

The first things I did was I was a writer, painter, and photographer, and we grew up very poor, so even though I could get into any college I wanted, there was no way to pay for it. ~ Lori Petty

Some excellent reference works already exist on both of these topics, a few of which are mentioned in the bibliography at the end of this book. Not only are there a variety of books that cover digital painting, modeling, animation, and
rendering from a generalized perspective, but there are also specific "how-to" guides for many of the more common software packages.
The third source of imagery-scanned/digitized "live-action" footage-is still probably the most common source with which we deal in digital compositing. There are a myriad of different formats that this source imagery can come from, some of them discussed in greater detail in Chapter 10 and Appendix D. ~ Brinkmann, Ron

I might have missed my calling as an editor. In the spring, the sight of my empty garden beds gives me the horticultural equivalent of writers' block: So much space! So many plants to choose among, and yet none of them seem quite right! ~ Susan Orlean

A lot of people are dissatisfied with their jobs. "Theologian" Drew Carey said, "You hate your job? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody. They meet at the bar." A research group affiliated with the University of Chicago recently listed the ten least happy jobs in the world and the ten happiest jobs in the world. What they found was the ten least happy jobs actually were more financially lucrative and offered higher status than the ten happiest jobs. The difference? People in the happiest jobs had a higher sense of meaning. Less money, less status, but a higher sense of meaning. The main thing you bring home from your work is not a paycheck. The main thing you bring home from work is your soul. Work is a soul function. We're made to create value. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, "There is nothing better for a person than that he should make his soul enjoy good in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God. ~ John Ortberg

Negative experiences repeat as long as they remain useful to you. ~ Tawny Lara

True. We both could. One of these days our search history is going to tip off the NSA and then we're going to be in trouble. It was a valid worry for a writer. ~ Chelsea M. Cameron

Memorizing the writer's handbook doesn't make you a writer. It makes you a specialist, and it puts you to a class with people who were given the same training. You all share the same view from the same room. ~ Keith Buckley

I'm not much of a joke writer. ~ Ben Falcone

Satan was the most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like insects at his feet. It ~ G.K. Chesterton

I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.' ~ David Sedaris

Being a writer is part of a noble tradition, as is being a musician – the last egalitarian and open associations. No matter what happens in terms of fame and fortune, dedication to writing is a marching-step forward from where you were before, when you didn't care about reaching out to the world, when you weren't hoping to contribute, when you were just standing there doing some job into which you had fallen. ~ Anne Lamott

Basically, I got into stand-up because I'm too egocentric to be an actor and not disciplined enough to be a writer. ~ Christian Finnegan

To all my readers. I don't need my daughter's okay to do anything. I was a writer before she was my daughter. The CRANK books were inspired by my desire to keep others from following in her path, but they are FICTION. And seriously, WTF do I need her permission for? Are you effing kidding me? I'm her MOTHER. ~ Ellen Hopkins

So many people romanticize writing. And I get it. But I never once wanted to be a writer. ~ Rory Freedman

I like to write short stories more because I never met a writer who wasn't lazy. And a short story is, by its very definition, short. It is something that generally you can turn out in a week to two weeks depending on how well it goes for you. But, at the same time, it gives the same satisfaction of creating a complete world. ~ Stephen King

As far as what readers can expect with 'Maybe Someday,' I'm not the type of writer who writes to educate or inform my readers. I simply write to entertain them. ~ Colleen Hoover

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

If you're a writer, you write. If you don't, you're dead. You have no home, no reason to be offered a seat at any table, and no reason to live. ~ James Grissom

Your Spirit Guides and Angels will never let you down as you build a rapport with them. In the end, they may be the only ones who don't let you down. ~ Linda Deir