What do writers say about the process of writing? What advice can we find from novelists, poets, and writers of narrative history? Here are a few voices with something to say:
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London
If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I’d type a little faster. Isaac Asimov
You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down. Ray Bradbury
My youngest child asked me the other day, “Mummy, if you had to choose between us and writing, what would you choose?” And I said, “Well I would choose you but I would be very, very grumpy.” J.K. Rowling
It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little – or not at all in some cases – should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time – or the tools – to write. Simple as that. Stephen King
Nothing turns out quite in the way that you thought it would when you are sketching out notes for the first chapter, or walking about muttering to yourself and seeing a story unroll. Agatha Christie
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. Robert Frost
I don’t know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they’re telling the truth. The fact is they’re using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they’re telling the truth about the human being—what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other. Maya Angelou
The revision for me is the exciting part; it’s the part that I can’t wait for—getting the whole dumb thing done so that I can do the real work, which is making it better and better and better. Toni Morrison
Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it…. Michael Crichton
I write to understand as much as to be understood. Elie Wiesel
I think all writers should take a drawing or painting class to learn how to paint with words. As Charles Dickens said, ‘Make me see.’ I try to make you see what’s happening and smell it and hear it. I want you to know what they had for dinner. I want you to know how long it took to walk from where to where. David McCullough
Telling stories is so important…Stories keep people alive. Doris Kearns Goodwin
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