“I find it only natural for a storyteller to be interested in storytelling and, for anyone who spends the better part of his or her life writing fiction, it is hardly surprising that the pleasures, worries, and mechanics of fiction-making should enter the work.” ShouldWritingNaturalPleasureFictionWorryStorytellingSurprisingStorytellerMechanicWriting Fiction Author:Norman Lock
“So for a long time, I did a lot of freelance writing in addition to writing fiction and such - I was a food critic for a magazine for a bit, I did writing for nonprofits and political things, I was the editorial consultant for another magazine for a couple years, all sorts of jobs.” WritingYearsLongJobsPoliticalBitsFictionCoupleLong TimeCriticsMagazinesEditorialsWriting FictionConsultantsNonprofits Author:Tod Goldberg
“I always say writing fiction isn't something you teach. It's something you do, and only experimentation - i.e. doing it, either badly or good sometimes - can help anybody get any better or worse at it.” WritingSometimesHelpingFictionTeachExperimentationWriting Fiction Author:Peter Orner
“It's much harder when you're writing about your life, than when you're writing fiction.” WritingFictionHarderWriting Fiction Author:Leigh Newman
“I sometimes get asked if I think about film stuff while I'm writing fiction, and the answer is, of course not.” IfsThinkingWritingSometimesFilmCoursesStuffAnswersFictionWriting Fiction Author:Matthew Specktor
“The tales are quite hard to remember and I found that going back to it between bouts of writing fiction, I was having to retrace my steps quite a lot, because the stories are very intricate and the material is elusive, and possibly with age, my memory is not as malleable as it used to be.” WritingHardStoriesAgeRememberUsedFoundMemoriesFictionStepsMaterialsTalesUsed To BeElusiveIntricateWriting Fiction Author:Marina Warner
“It's my experience that people don't think of fiction writing as being as intellectually serious as other kinds of writing in academia and so without a career as a critic or essayist you can be treated as something of a spiritual medium - a fraud - for "just" writing fiction.” PeopleThinkingWritingKindSpiritualFictionCareersSeriousCriticsTreatedMediumsFraudAcademiaFiction WritingWriting FictionEssayists Author:Alexander Chee
“The best writing advice I ever got was "Keep moving forward, don't retreat into rewrites." The worst came from a book that said "Writing fiction is like telling lies," which just seems stupid to me.” WritingSaidBookSeemsMovingLyingFictionWorstAdviceStupidMoving ForwardRetreatKeep MovingKeep Moving ForwardWriting AdviceWriting FictionTelling Lies Author:David B. Coe
“I think I view myself primarily as a fiction writer. Poetry is more of a "hobby," a time of rest from the hard work of writing fiction.” ThinkingWritingHardViewsFictionHard WorkPoetry IsHobbiesFiction WritersWriting Fiction Author:Yuriy Tarnawsky
“When you're writing fiction it's a heightened voice. You're trying to cast a spell, which isn't the same thing as trying to cast someone into it. You are creating a reality but it's a different sort of performance.” WritingTryingDifferentRealityVoiceFictionCreatingPerformancesCastsSpellsWriting Fiction Author:Darryl Pinckney
“You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.” WritingFictionMemoirWriting Fiction Author:Elizabeth Gilbert
“[Jack] Kerouac was writing fiction. What he did when he wrote about me...he made me out with Russian Countesses and Swiss accounts and other things I didn't have or didn't happen and so on.” WritingMadeHappensFictionAccountsWriting FictionSwiss Author:William S. Burroughs
“My work is very eclectic. I write books that range from writing fiction, writing fable where I am very directly trying to imagine alternate worlds, to writing about [Buckminster] Fuller who was the ultimate world man creating all sorts of alternate worlds and believing that they were imminent to my own work of - for instance, a project that I've been working on for some year and a half, two years now that continues to evolve has been what I call Deep Time Photography.” MenWorldWritingTryingYearsBelieveHas BeensTwoBookMy OwnHalfFictionImagineProjectsCreatingPhotographyUltimateInstanceEvolveRangeTwo YearsFablesFiction WritingWriting FictionEclecticBuckminster Fuller Author:Jonathon Keats
“I don't think writing fiction has changed my worldview.” ThinkingWritingFictionChangedWorldviewWriting Fiction Author:Donald Ray Pollock
“Even when it comes to writing fiction, how do you encompass all this stuff that's right on the tip of your tongue? You have to fold that into what you're working on.” WritingStuffFictionTongueFoldsWriting Fiction Author:Paul Beatty
“I always say that writing non-fiction versus writing fiction is a bit like architecture versus abstract painting.” WritingBitsFictionPaintingArchitectureAbstractVersusNon FictionWriting FictionAbstract Painting Author:Andrew Lam
“My general approach to writing fiction is that you try to have as few conceptual notions as possible and you just respond to the energy that the story is making rather than having a big over plan. I think if you have a big over plan, the danger is that you might just take your plan and then you bore everybody. I always joke that it's like going on a date with index cards. You know, at 7:30 p.m. I should ask about her mother. You keep all the control to yourself but you are kind of insulting to the other person.” IfsThinkingKnowsShouldWritingTryingKindPersonsStoriesBigsMightMotherAsksEnergyFictionPlansDangerApproachJokesNotionCardsBoresInsultingWriting Fiction Author:George Saunders
“As a young kid I assumed that everybody was sort of on the same wavelength as I was and then I found out in a lot of small ways that that wasn't the case. It's sort of a mixed blessing. My mind is like a puppy. It goes all over. I guess writing fiction was a way of harnessing that. I could hook a puppy up to a treadmill and get something out of it.” WayWritingMindKidsYoungFoundFictionCasesBlessingHookPuppyWriting FictionTreadmillsWavelength Author:George Saunders
“I guess it must be a time-of-life thing, looking back and trying to make some sense of who I am and where I've been. It's a weird thing, having to give an account of yourself, to try to make sense of yourself for yourself. I'm not that old, but I have been writing fiction professionally for a long time now. I started so young and went so hard for so long. And I guess it was about feeling I had the space to look over my shoulder.” GivingWritingTryingLooksLongHas BeensHardFeelingsYoungSpaceFictionLong TimeAccountsShouldersWho I AmMake SenseLooking BackWeird ThingsWriting Fiction Author:Tim Winton
“I love the resource of the Internet. I use it all the time. Anything I'm writing - for example, if I'm writing a scene about Washington D.C. and I want to know where this monument is, I can find it right away, I can get a picture of the monument, it just makes your life so much easier, especially if you're writing fiction. You can check stuff so much quicker, and I think that's all great for writers.” IfsThinkingKnowsWantWritingI CanUseStuffFictionExampleInternetEasierSceneResourcesChecksMonumentWriting Fiction Author:Dave Barry
“Writing grew out of the pleasure of escape. My novels are very much outside of my personal experience. That is why I love writing fiction. It allows me to leave my existence and inhabit other lives.” WritingPleasureExistenceFictionNovelGrewPersonal ExperiencesWriting Fiction Author:Danielle Trussoni
“Whether or not you're writing fiction or you're making sculptures. You're trying to create a space. You're trying to make something where your own epiphanies and your own desires and your own understanding of the world can reveal itself.” WorldWritingTryingDesireUnderstandingSpaceFictionSculptureEpiphanyWriting Fiction Author:Denison Witmer
“I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.” PeopleWayShouldWritingSaidSeemsLastsProcessFictionNovelClearStudentsMinesDegreesSentencesWriting FictionProselytizing Author:John Irving
“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
“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” LifeWritingTruthBeautifulLyingFictionBad AssFiction WritingFiction WritersWriting FictionReading And WritingWriters ReadingReading WritingRealistic Fiction Book:Danse Macabre Source: Danse Macabre