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"I never do a full outline, and if I did, I would not feel bound to it, because the view from inside a scene can be different from the view outside it. But neither do I just start writing and see what happens; I am far more disciplined than that."
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Exlpore more Writing quotes
"It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them."
"A writer's primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore's is to make cents."
"Remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents."
"Write out of love. Your piece will finish itself."
"At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind."
"One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed."
"An author's operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature."
Explore more quotes by Piers Anthony
"Keep writing, because not only does practice improve skill, it gives you more chances to score on the market. I did that for eight years before making my first sale."
"Normally I work out a general summary of what I mean to do, then start writing, and the details can be different from my anticipation. So there is considerable flow, but always within channels."
"What I like least is dealing with publishers who simply don't want collaborations regardless of their merit."
"I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any other type of fiction from me, so Xanth pays my way."
"Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker series also shows the potential of lighter fantastic fiction. I read the first, and listened to a tape of a later one, and it's fun."
"I have always admired the work of Phil Farmer and was glad for the chance to work with him. Readers today may be too young to remember his classics like The Lovers."
"When I started writing this, I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humorous, and continued from there."
"I wish my readers took less of my time - about a third of my working time goes to them - but I love and need them all."
"Princess Rose should indeed be a TV movie, assuming something doesn't go wrong. I don't know how good a movie it will be, because the way movie folk think is different from the way writers think, and I distrust what isn't done my way. This is what I call a healthy paranoia."
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