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"Providing a writer isn't put off by conventions - and some are - attending them can be a nice break from the necessary isolation of writing."
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"A writer's primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore's is to make cents."
Author Name
Personal Development

"A writer's duty is to draw a picture that expresses more inner beauty, deeper anxiety, and more complex tragedy than a real character ever can."
Author Name
Personal Development

"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."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Write out of love. Your piece will finish itself."
Author Name
Personal Development

"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."
Author Name
Personal Development

"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."
Author Name
Personal Development

"E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard."
Author Name
Personal Development

"You never know what you will write until you write it."
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Personal Development
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"I think it is probably more important to attend specialized conventions for a journeyman writer than any other, but it's useful at all stages of a career, if for nothing else, to find out how the industry is working at any given time."
Time

"I ride horseback - arthritic knees permitting - or listen to opera. Sometimes I cook. I used to do needlework, but it's hard on my hands now, so I only do it occasionally, but I like it. And, of course, I read."
Now

"Providing a writer isn't put off by conventions - and some are - attending them can be a nice break from the necessary isolation of writing."
Writing

"Common folk didn't have last names in the 8th and 9th centuries."
History

"Very few editors worry about heresy - their goals are much too commercial, thank goodness."
Goal

"Isn't that an odd philosophy for a vampire?"
Philosophy

"I outline fairly extensively because I'm usually dealing with real events. I don't need to give myself as much information as I used to, but I still like to have two pages of outline for every projected 100 pages of manuscript."
Events
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