Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

If we’re suggesting improvements I tell my 13-year-old to always use pathetic fallacy to up her grades (only joking – you really don’t need my writing advice).  Buffy makes me laugh.  They can’t use pathetic fallacy, what with the weather always being the same, so they seem to try and achieve similar results by the clothes the characters wear.  Buffy wears short, tight stuff unless she’s sad about Angel then wears what look like maternity dungarees.  When Angel went bad that seemed to be denoted by his clothes being noticeably more shiny than when he was good.  He really carried off those silky blouses I thought.

Talent can’t be taught, but it can be awakened.

I realised that if I was going to assume the responsibility of writing about my home, I needed narrative ruthlessness. I couldn’t dull the edges and fall in love with my characters and spare them. Life does not spare us.

If you want men to build a ship, don’t gather the wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

 

http://mironline.org/submissions/

The writer must be in it, he can’t be to one side of it, ever. He has to be endangered by it. His own attitudes have to be tested in it. The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.

Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.