"All coherent intellectual work begins with a genuine reaction. " - George Saunders
A Swim in the Pond in the Raid
"Plots and hooks yield the same desideratum: they set the reader a question, with the implicit assurance that the question will be answered." - Martin Amis
(A linked pair of writing dictums: “Don’t make things happen for no reason” and “Having made something happen, make it matter.”)
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
—Terry Pratchett
"A well-fed man keeps and calmly gives forth his infinitesimal portion of eternity. It sounds big in the summer night. And it is, as it always was down the ages, when there was a man with something to tell, and ones, quiet and wise, to listen." - Ray Bradbury
"my books tend to be based on situation rather than story. Some of the ideas which have produced those books are more complex than others, but the majority start out with the stark simplicity of a department store window display or a waxwork tableau." - Stephen King
To Read: Dorothea Brande’s Becoming A Writer
"Conjure the nouns, alert the secret self, taste the darkness." - Ray Bradbury
The mathematical genius Alexander Grothendieck once had a metaphor for solving problems. He suggested that instead of forcing open an impossibly hard kernel with a hammer and chisel, one should simply let it sit in water and wait. Over time, the shell softens and opens with ease. This is also true in writing; time is the only non-substitutable... See more