MASTERS OF SHADOW

HARLAN ELLISON

 

 

My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration and ignoble deaths;

that there is security in personal strength; that you can fight City Hall and win; that any action is better than no action, even if it's the wrong action;

that you never reach glory or self-fulfillment unless you're willing to risk everything, dare anything, put yourself dead on the line every time;

and that once one becomes strong or rich or potent or powerful it is the responsibility of the strong to help the weak become strong.

• The Harlan Ellison Hornbook, (9 August 1973)

NEIL GAIMAN

Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, "So this is how it feels,"

and I would tie it up in pretty words.

I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else.

My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss.

 My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled.

For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stage of The Globe, and make the pit cry tears of their own.

• William Shakespeare, as portrayed by Neil Gaiman as the playwright is looking back over his career.

 ERNEST HEMINGWAY

 

 

 

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with.

But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it,

and know that I had something to write about,

than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.

• Preface to The First Forty-Nine Stories (1944)

DEAN KOONTZ
 

 

I start with an intriguing premise. If we go all the way back to WATCHERS, the premise is

 What if an experiment, seeking to enhance intelligence, produced a dog as smart as any human being, and what, if the dog escaped the laboratory?

Then I wonder about the lead of the story, the first person who will interact with the dog.

This is all in my head. I don’t write character profiles. When I have the character that seems the most interesting one for the story at hand–

in this case a former soldier and a widower, Travis, who in the first scene is going into the woods to commit suicide–

I ask myself what the book is about. I don’t mean plot. Call it theme, subtext, whatever you want.

Often the theme comes quickly when I have my main character. Travis is in a dark place and to get himself out of it, he desperately needs to change.

The novel, then, would be about the difficulty of changing who we are, of undoing what we have become and redeeming ourselves. Now I can start to write.
      Dean Koontz on writing
                        http://sliverofstonemagazine.com/2013/04/27/dean-koontz-on-writing/

STEPHEN KING

 

 

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends.

In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.”

“Writing is refined thinking.”

“Write with the door closed, and rewrite with the door open.”

For those of you who wonder what Victor Standish
does for fun at Meilori's.
Look at him playing trumpet at the haunted jazz club
to help out Quincy Coleman.