“A novel is like a mountain. Like Mount Rainier. You ever seen Mount Rainier? It's like you're looking at God. It's so gorgeous and dynamic and powerful and meaningful. Then as you walk toward it, Things change. At one point, it's not even a mountain anymore. There's an incline, but you don't see the whole thing. There are different levels. When you get to the top, you look out from the mountain and it's just as majestic because now you're looking from God's point of view. So the novel is a mountain. Now, the short story is an island --- some trees and a beach and a little creature running around. You go on the island, but then you realize that underneath it is a mountain, but it's just underwater, so you never see it. You have to describe the whole mountain, but only from the point of view of that island. Whatever detritus gets washed up, whatever the weather is there, whatever is happening underneath, you have to somehow give that to the reader without making it explicit.” NovelShort StoryWriting QuotesShort Story Writing Author:Walter Mosley
“I always tell people, if a young girl read "Beloved" as her first novel, she'd have to kill either herself or her mother, because in "Beloved" you have a mother killing their children. This is not something a child would accept very easily. And would never understand.” PeopleIfsFirstsChildrenYoungMotherGirlAcceptingNovelKillingBeloved Author:Walter Mosley
“I think that it's important to try to keep reality. I think that Gabriel Garcia Marquez speaks a lot about reality in his magical realism. So I don't think we have to be hyper-realistic. But we have to understand the pressures that undergird the lives of the characters within that novel.” ThinkingTryingImportantCharacterRealitySpeakNovelPressureRealisticRealismMagical RealismHyperGabrielMarquezGarcia Marquez Author:Walter Mosley
“The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.” WorldLooksJobsNovelUncomfortableCorpsesStink Author:Walter Mosley
“A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him," my father had told me more than once. "A businessman has business books and a dream has novels and books of poetry. Most women like reading about love, and a true revolutionary will have books about the minutiae of overthrowing the oppressor. A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.” KnowsMenNeedsPersonsBookDreamReadingFatherWaitingNovelModernSettingSettingsRevolutionaryBusinessmanPeasantsOppressorsInconsequentialMinutiaeBookcases Author:Walter Mosley
“The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told.” IfsWritingCoursesProcessNovelPathJourneyCreatingTrainTrackTalesBoatDefinedNarrativeDestinationDiscoveringHighwaysDistractedTrain Tracks Book:This Year You Write Your Novel Source: This Year You Write Your Novel
“HBO and I have a deal to at least try to make a television series from the Leonid McGill stories. We're going to start with the first novel, 'The Long Fall'.” TryingFirstsLongStoriesFallDealsNovelTelevisionSeriesHbo Author:Walter Mosley
“... We must remember that there's more than one story and plot in every novel. There are at least as many stories as there are main characters, and each of these stories has to have multiple plots to keep it going - blood and bone, nerve and tissue, forgotten longing and unknown events.” WritingCharacterStoriesRememberNovelBloodEventsLongingForgottenBonesPlotNervesMultipleTissuesMain Characters Book:This Year You Write Your Novel Source: This Year You Write Your Novel
“This is all you have to do. Sit down once a day to the novel and start working without internal criticism, without debilitating expectations, without the need to look at your words as if they were already printed and bound. The beginning is only a draft. Drafts are imperfect by definition.” IfsNeedsWritingLooksNovelExpectationsCriticismBoundsDefinitionsInternalsImperfectPrinted Book:This Year You Write Your Novel Source: This Year You Write Your Novel
