Quotes on Writing M

• Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences. ~ Anne McCaffrey

• James Blish told me I had the worst case of "said bookism" (that is, using every word except said to indicate dialogue). He told me to limit the verbs to said, replied, asked, and answered and only when absolutely necessary. ~ Anne McCaffrey

• I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this. ~ Cormac McCarthy

• So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that's alive in your heart. That's the one you have to write. ~ Lurleen McDaniel

• My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly. ~ John D. MacDonald

• I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write. ~ John D. MacDonald

• Writing is not a profession, occupation or job; it is not a way of life: it is a comprehensive response to life. ~ Gregory McDonald

• Just keep writing. Keep reading. If you are meant to be a writer, a storyteller, it’ll work itself out. You just keep feeding it your energy, and giving it that crucial chance to work itself out. By reading and writing. ~ Robin McKinley

• The story is always better than your ability to write it. My belief about this is that if you ever get to the point that you think you’ve done a story justice, you’re in the wrong business. ~ Robin McKinley

• Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader. ~ Robin McKinley

• An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

• There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

• The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing. ~ Ken MacLeod

• Question how much freedom your path affords you. Be utterly ruthless about it. It's your freedom that will get you to where you want to go. ~ Hugh Macleod

• The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it's going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it's worth it. Even if you don't end up pulling it off, you'll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It's NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity- that hurts FAR more than any failure. ~ Hugh Macleod

• Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly. ~ Hugh Macleod

• Diluting your product to make it more 'commercial' will just make people like it less. ~ Hugh Macleod

• It's about what YOU are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. ~ Hugh Macleod

• Part of being a Master is learning how to sing in nobody else's voice but your own. ~ Hugh Macleod

• Put your whole self into it, and you will find your true voice. Hold back and you won't. It's that simple. ~ Hugh Macleod

• People who are 'ready' give off a different vibe than people who aren't. Animals can smell fear; maybe that's it. The minute you become ready is the the minute you stop dreaming. Suddenly it's no longer about 'becoming'. Suddenly it's about 'doing'. ~ Hugh Macleod

• Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice. ~ Hugh Macleod

• The less you can live on, the more chance your idea will succeed. This is true even after you’ve 'made it'. ~ Hugh Macleod

• Publishers are just middlemen. That's all. If artists could remember that more often, they'd save themselves a lot of aggravation. ~ Hugh Macleod

• Nobody can tell you if what you're doing is good, meaningful or worthwhile. The more compelling the path, the more lonely it is. ~ Hugh Macleod

• If you try to make something just to fit your uninformed view of some hypothetical market, you will fail. If you make something special and powerful and honest and true, you will succeed. ~ Hugh Macleod

• The creative person basically has two kinds of jobs: One is the sexy, creative kind. Second is the kind that pays the bills. Sometimes the task in hand covers both bases, but not often. This tense duality will always play center stage. It will never be transcended. ~ Hugh Macleod

• The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly. ~ Bernard Malamud

• If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster. ~ Gustav Mahler

• Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty. ~ Rosemary Mahoney

• Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day. ~ Norman Mailer

• Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. ~ Norman Mailer

• I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension. ~ Norman Mailer

• There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

• The only time I know that something is true is the moment I discover it in the act of writing. ~ Jean Malaquais

• Writing well means never having to say, 'I guess you had to be there.' ~ Jef Mallett

• A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~ Thomas Mann

• Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all. ~ Katherine Mansfield

• The task of a writer consists in being able to make something out of an idea. ~ Thomas Mann

• The first step to becoming a better writer is believing your own experience is worth writing about. ~ Peter Marmorek

• Language is neither innocent nor neutral. Linguistic habits condition our view of the world and hinder social change. ~ Carmen Martinez Ten

• Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing. ~ Guy De Maupassant

• From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. ~ Andre Maurois

• To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. ~ Herman Melville

• There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers. ~ H.L. Mencken

• As a younger man I wrote for eight years without ever earning a nickel which is a long apprenticeship, but in that time I learned a lot about my trade. ~ James Michener

• I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail. ~ James A. Michener

• I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. ~ James Michener

• I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters. ~ James A. Michener

• The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation. ~ James Michener

• Every language reflects the prejudices of the society in which it evolved. ~ Casey Miller and Kate Swift

• Writing is its own reward. ~ Henry Miller

• After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in. ~ Henry Miller

• Writers would be warm, loyal, and otherwise terrific people--if only they'd stop writing. ~ Laura Miller

• Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators. ~ Olin Miller

• Almost anyone can become an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being. ~ A.A. Milne

• If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, its research. ~ Wilson Mizner

• The problem is to teach ourselves to think, and the writing will take care of itself. ~ Christopher Mobley

• I always do the first line well, but have trouble doing the others. ~ Moliére

• Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money. ~ Moliere

• That must be fine, for I don’t understand a word. ~ Molière

• An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations. ~ Charles de Montesquieu

• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. ~ George Moore

• Any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others. ~ Marianne Moore

• When I sit at my table to write, I never know what it’s going to be until I'm under way. I trust in inspiration, which sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. But I don't sit back waiting for it. I work every day. ~ Alberto Moravia

• Writing has made me rich--not in money but in a couple hundred characters out there, whose pursuits and anguish and triumphs I've shared. I am unspeakably grateful at the life I have come to lead. ~ Wright Morris

• Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill. ~ Edmund Morrison

• If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~ Toni Morrison

• I don’t wait to be struck by lightning and I don’t need certain slants of light in order to be able to write. ~ Toni Morrison

• Rules are a point to build a story around. They are a plain, solid, square foundation. If you stick to that foundation, you get a solid, plain, square building. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing notable either. To make an interesting building, you've got to go beyond that foundation, ignoring it as much as you can without having the building fall apart. The bending of the rules until the story is ready to crumble is what makes a good story--interesting, intriguing, and plausible, but almost ready to burst. ~ David "Pasha" Morrow

• I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

• Never save anything for your next book, because that possible creation may not be properly shaped to hold the thoughts you're working with today. In fiction especially, anything that could happen, should happen. ~ Tam Mossman

• It has not been for nothing that the word has remained man's principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man's other tools would be worthless. ~ Lewis Mumford

• Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about. ~ Alice Munro

• Rewriting is like scrubbing the basement floor with a toothbrush. ~ Pete Murphy

• First you're an unknown, then you write one book and you move up to obscurity. ~ Martin Myers

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