“I was a journalism major, and I would take creative writing classes as part of that, but I would also look for opportunities to write stories for some of my other classes. So for my course in Scandinavian history, I asked if I could write historical fiction instead of term papers. Sometimes they’d say yes.” IfsWritingLooksSometimesStoriesCoursesOpportunityTermFictionClassCreativePaperMajorsHistoricalJournalismIf I CouldHistorical FictionPapersCreative WritingScandinaviansTerm Paper Author:George R. R. Martin
“It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiæ of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact with far-reaching memories and storied residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations to human existence.” HumansFactsLightPassionEnergyImaginationMemoriesPowerfulExistenceFictionVisionCreativeObjectsMaterialsIdealsRelationObviousIntenseConfusionFancyReachingFedsAssociationInwardRepresentationConstructsInclinationHuman ExistenceHabitualTransientBreadthCreative EnergySusceptibility Author:George Eliot
“As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.” PeopleEndsMomentsFictionTalkingNovelCreativeSuccessfulDirectorsScience FictionHistoricalAwfulJournalistHistorical FictionPublishCreative PeopleFiction Novels Author:Neil Gaiman
“I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place.” LittlesSidesFictionCreativeSeaOceanIslandsNonfictionCaribbeanAtlantic Ocean Author:Jamaica Kincaid
“I took a couple of creative writing classes with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton University, and in my senior year there, I took a long fiction workshop with Toni Morrison. I fell in love with it.” WritingYearsLongFictionClassCreativeCoupleUniversitySeniorCreative WritingWorkshopsCarolsJoycePrincetonSenior YearPrinceton University Author:Mohsin Hamid
“From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment.” KnowsWritingYearsActionFictionCreativeTeachingSeriousElementsDeserveSettingSettingsGrantedTreatmentCreative WritingFiction Writing Author:Garry Disher
“I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness.” ThinkingProcessFictionCreativeJourneyWildernessDickensDostoyevsky Author:William P. Young
“I do teach fiction and non-fiction, and usually I'm interested in works that confuse genre, but I'm very new to teaching creative writing, I don't have an MFA, or a PhD, I tend to approach it just through my own practice.” WritingMy OwnFictionTeachPracticeCreativeTeachingApproachGenreCreative WritingNon FictionPhds Author:Kate Zambreno
“I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions.” ThinkingWritingTryingPersonsSelfPhilosophyBigsFormLiteratureFictionCreativeDoubtSeeingStudentsTheoryObsessionConfusionCuriousCreative WritingTabooWorkshopsInvestigatingWriting WorkshopEncourage Students Author:Kate Zambreno
“Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.” IfsThinkingWayWantNeedsWritingStoriesMightHappensAbleFictionCasesNovelCreativeMastersExerciseSouthFishesSentencesBiologyNeglectCopiesSouth AfricaPublishNon FictionCopyingBodyguardPaleontologyButtocksFieldworkHamstringsCoetzee Author:Marlene van Niekerk
“In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.” WritingStillsAgeSchoolLiteratureFictionCreativeTaughtHigh SchoolProseGrammarCreative WritingNon FictionSixteenProse And Poetry Author:Margaret Atwood
“When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.” WayNeedsWritingReasonLanguagePayAttentionFictionCreativeGreaterTaughtPoetProgramUniversityCreative WritingWorkshopsFiction WritingFiction WritersHouston Author:Edward Hirsch
“Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today.” WritingPersonsBookMatterTodayFictionCreativeNosesNon FictionCreative PersonMatter Of Time Author:Paul Kane
“I had two competing ambitions when I was a child: I wanted to be a Scientist and Discover Great Things, but I also wanted to be an Author and Write Great Things. I've always tried to combine the analytical with the creative, to some extent or another, because I find it hard to do one without the other. I've worked as a tech journalist, social media consultant, and now am self-publishing fiction.” WritingChildrenTwoSelfHardWantedSocialFictionCreativeMediaAmbitionScientistSocial MediaGreat ThingsJournalistPublishingCompetingConsultants Author:Suw Charman-Anderson
“I came to fantasy fairly late. For some ten years, I had been happily writing fiction and non-fiction for adults. But I always loved fantasy, whether for adults or young people; and at that particular point in my life, I wanted to try it, to understand it, as part of the process of learning to be a writer. The results were beyond anything I could have foreseen. As I've said often and elsewhere, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life.” PeopleWritingTryingYearsSaidWantedYoungProcessResultsFictionFantasyCreativeParticularTenLateAdultsElsewhereLiberatingNon FictionWriting FictionForeseen Author:Lloyd Alexander
“I know people who've passed every creative writing course under the sun and who are more analytically intelligent and far better-read than I, but who just can't write either fiction or drama. It's like any art-form. In order for talent to be developed, crafted, it's got to be there in the first place.” PeopleKnowsWritingFirstsArtFormOrderCoursesFictionSunCreativeTalentDramaIntelligentCreative Writing Author:Suhayl Saadi