#raft

Jesus--if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#thought-experiments #writing-craft #experience

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#readers-and-writers #reading #writing #writing-craft #writing-process

...the answer is not in the damn blank page - it's in the days or years before and you have to dredge it up - exhume the past again ... ↗

— John Geddes

#experience #memories #past #writing-craft #writing-process

I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret. ↗

— Silas House

#writing #writing-craft #love

The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing. ↗

— Sydney Smith

#enjoyment #novels #pleasure #writing #love

Since man cannot live without miracles, he will provide himself with miracles of his own making. He will believe in witchcraft and sorcery, even though he may otherwise be a heretic, an atheist, and a rebel. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#miracles #superstition #witchcraft #atheist

The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul. ↗

— Miranda July

#writing-craft #metaphor

The only 'ironclad rules' in writing fiction are the laws of physics and the principles of grammar, and even those can be bent. ↗

— Val Kovalin

#writing-craft #writing-process #grammar

A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains. ↗

— Criss Jami

#adversity #artist #craftiness #craftsmanship #crafty

Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly. ↗

— C. Kennedy

#writing-advice #writing-craft #writing-humor #writing-philosophy #writing-process