Writers On Writing.

Writer's quotes are like mini writing lessons--they make you think deeply about the writing process. 

   My favorite quote from the list below is #6, James Michener, because I believe the art of writing well is all in the editing. In the editing, that is where the best of the story comes out and the writing  can soar.

1.  "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." - Jorge Luis Borges

2.  “The idea is to write so that people hear it, and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.” —Maya Angelou

3.  Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow

4.  And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath

5.  If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~Toni Morrison

6.  I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. ~James Michener

  

7.  Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

8.  Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

9.  To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the   words make. ~Truman Capote, McCall's, November 1967

10. Be obscure clearly. ~E.B. White 

11. A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident. ~W. Somerset Maugham, Summing Up, 1938

12. The road to hell is paved with adverbs. ~Stephen King

13. Caress your phrase tenderly: it will end by smiling at you. ~Anatole France

14. Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself. ~Franz Kafka

15. The best style is the style you don't notice. ~Somerset Maugham

16. Kids: Fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists. Stephen King

17. When you are describing something:
      A shape, or sound, or tint;
      Don't state the matter plainly,
      But put it in a hint;
      And learn to look at all things,
      With a sort of mental squint.
~Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

These writers have important truths in their quotes. Take their advice, then re-write until your words sing.

When  dragons and faeries are real to me, the writer, they will be real to my readers.
 Diane Mae Robinson

Visit my author's website: http://www.dragonsbook.com