BEST ADVICE FROM BEST-SELLING AUTHORS

"The writer has to have patience, the perseverance to just sit there alone and grind It out. And if it’s not worth doing that, then he doesn’t want to write." 

- Elmore Leonard

"It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style."
 — P. D. James

 "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it."
 - Elmore Leonard

"The bottom line is this: Write less, not more."  
- Jeff Goins

"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something – anything – down on paper."
-F. Scott Fitzgerald

 "Show up, show up, show up, and after a while, the muse shows up too." 
- Isabel Allende

 "Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water." 
- Kurt Vonnegut

 "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." 
- Anton Chekhov

"You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it." 
- Susan Orlean

" If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful."
- Ray Bradbury

 “Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don’t forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.”
- Paula Danziger

 “Two questions form the foundation of all novels: ‘What if?’ and ‘What next?’"
- Tom Clancy

 "I do not rewrite unless I am absolutely sure that I can express the material better if I do rewrite it.”
- William Faulkner

 “In truth, I never consider the audience for whom I’m writing. I just write what I want to write.” 
- J K Rowling

 "Prose is architecture, not interior decoration." 
- Ernest Hemingway

 "If you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you."
 - Madeleine L'Engle

 "Start telling the stories that only you can tell." 
- Neil Gaiman

 "Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find." 
- Jonathan Franzen

 "Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish." 
- John Steinbeck