Voltar

Each time I discovered a potential link between one character’s story and another’s, several more connections would reveal themselves, like a beautiful, complex web spinning itself.

Richard Scarsbrook , em Rockets Versus Gravity
novel writing fiction author characters web character-development circle-of-ideas circle-plots story-web the-writing-process

Being the Novelist-in-Residence at a riad hotel in the kasbah of an Arabic North African city is a lot like trying to write one’s memoirs on shreds of napkins in a nuthouse.

Roman Payne
writers roman-payne writers-on-writing exploration book-quotes writers-life sahara-desert writers-quotes travel-writing book-quote writers-inspiration writers-world the-writing-life writers-and-writing travel-quote moroccan-literature exploration-quotes book-quote-of-oneself the-writing-process marrakech arabesque marrakech-quote marrakesh marrakesh-quote medina morocco-quote morrocan roman-payne-quotes saharan-soliloquy the-arabesque

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.

William Zinsser , em On Writing Well: The Classic Guide To Writing Nonfiction
writing writers writer write on-writing writing-advice writers-life wrote written on-writing-well the-writing-process

The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everyone else, you have to want to write better than everyone else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen--editors, agents, and publishers--whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards are not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best.

William Zinsser , em On Writing Well: The Classic Guide To Writing Nonfiction
writing writers writer write on-writing writing-advice writers-life wrote written on-writing-well the-writing-process

Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don't like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I'm coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that wont the game.

William Zinsser , em On Writing Well: The Classic Guide To Writing Nonfiction
writing writer editing write on-writing wrote editor written edit on-writing-well the-writing-process the-editing-process

There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.

Anne Lamott , em Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
writing writer author write on-writing writing-advice bird-by-bird the-writing-process writing-help

For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.

Anne Lamott , em Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
writing writer author write on-writing writing-advice the-writing-process

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.

Annie Dillard , em The Writing Life
writing writer author write the-writing-life the-writing-process the-literary-process