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Quote by Jerry Pournelle

“Write a lot. And finish what you write. Don't join writer's clubs and go sit around having coffee reading pieces of your manuscript to people. Write it. Finish it. I set those rules up years ago, and nothing's changed.”

Quote by Jerry Pournelle

Author

Jerry Pournelle

Jerry Pournelle is an influential American science fiction writer born on August 7, 1933. His works are known for their profound philosophical insights and complex narrative structures, having a significant impact on the science fiction genre. more

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“Suppose that a person writes what she must. That is only the first step of becoming a writer. The work must survive the moment of creation. It must get out to an audience. She or he must dare to show the work. She must risk ridicule, misunderstanding, scandal, condemnation, & what's often worse, none of the above: silence. No attention at all.”

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Author:Marge Piercy

“The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.”

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Book:Six Characters in Search of an Author

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“Some writers find that they don't know their themes until they've finished the first draft (I am one). They then rewrite with an eye toward balancing on that tightrope: not too contrived, not too rambling; does what I'm saying about the world below me actually add up to anything? Other writers pay attention to these things as they write the first draft. Either way, an awareness of the macro and micro levels of theme can provide one more tool for thinking about what you should write, and how.”

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Author:Nancy Kress

“I became a writer, a teller of tales, because otherwise I would have died... or worse.”

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Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon

“I started to submit when I was twelve, and obviously at that time they weren't good enough, and I suppose in my heart of hearts I knew it. But you have to start sooner or later, you have to dig in.”

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Book:Bare bones: conversations on terror with Stephen King

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“The craft of writing is the art of penetrating other minds with the figures that are in your own mind.”

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Book:Conversations with John Steinbeck

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“To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.”

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Author:Gao Xingjian

“There is poetry in fiction. If you cannot see it and feel it when you write, you need to step back and examine what you are doing wrong. If you have not figured out how to write a simple declarative sentence and make it sing with that poetry, you are not yet ready to write an entire book.”

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Book:Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

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“I believe that the short story is as different a form from the novel as poetry is, and the best stories seem to me to be perhaps closer in spirit to poetry than to novels.”

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Author:Tobias Wolff

“I think my first general rule is that most of my experiences are not that interesting. It's usually other people's experiences. It's not that entirely conscious. Somebody tells me a story or, you know, repeats an anecdote that somebody else told them and I just feel like I have to write it down so I don't forget - that means for me, something made it fiction-worthy. Interesting things never happen to me, so maybe two or three times when they do, I have to use them, so I write them down.”