“The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.” WritingTwoRealityRunningTurnsChoicesEnergyFictionMysteryProduceTiredFormerConquerReality Of LifeComplexityIntimidatingTwo Choices Book:There Was a Country: A Memoir Source: There Was a Country: A Memoir
“Fiction keeps its audience by retaining the world as its subject matter. People like the world. Many people actually prefer it to art and spend their days by choice in the thick of it.” PeopleWorldArtMatterChoicesFictionAudienceSubjectsThickSubject MatterRetainingThick Of It Book:Living by Fiction Source: Living by Fiction
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.” MatterChoicesFictionSubjectsMoralityNarrativeNovelistsPlotSubject MatterBewildered Book:Outlander Source: Outlander
“In fiction, I exercise my nosiness. I am as curious as my cats, and indeed that has led to trouble often enough and used up several of my nine lives. I am an avid listener. I am fascinated by other people's lives, the choices they make and how that works out through time, what they have done and left undone, what they tell me and what they keep secret and silent, what they lie about and what they confess, what they are proud of and what shames them, what they hope for and what they fear. The source of my fiction is the desire to understand people and their choices through time.” PeopleDoneEnoughUsedLyingDesireChoicesLeftSecretFictionTroubleSourceProudExerciseCatShameSilentWork OutNineCuriousFascinatedListenersUndoneRough TimesAvidNine Lives Author:Marge Piercy
“If you want to be a fiction writer, you need to start reading like a fiction writer. To do so, you need to learn about craft so that the next time you pick up a contemporary short story, you're reading it not as an abstraction floating in formaldehyde, existing simply for the theorist's dull scalpel to saw on, but as a concrete thing constructed out of words and shaped by syntax, brought to life by a writer who made several thousand choices, some large, some small, before letting that imperfect beauty, the story, walk on its own two feet.” IfsWantNeedsWritingMadeTwoStoriesChoicesReadingNextWalksFictionSawsFeetThousandPicksContemporaryCraftsDullShort StoryImperfectConcreteNext TimeFloatingAbstractionFiction WritersTheoristsSyntaxScalpels Author:John McNally