Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.
—Jane Yolen
If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.
—William Campbell Gault
Pay attention to the sound of words.
—Dave Wolverton
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
—William Faulkner
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
—Raymond Chandler
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
—Alfred Hitchcock
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
Improvement is first and foremost about looking for your strengths and maximizing the shit out of them, rather than wasting all your energy on trying to make your weaknesses bearable.
—Tim Brownson
You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work.
—William Gibson
Exposure is what people die of when they get lost in the woods. Artists need to get paid.
—Bob Ragland
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