“When you are young, hone your craft and write shorter pieces instead of novels, because it's really hard to finish a novel.” WritingHardYoungNovelPiecesCrafts Author:Laini Taylor
“Read like mad. But try to do it analytically - which can be hard, because the better and more compelling a novel is, the less conscious you will be of its devices. It's worth trying to figure those devices out, however: they might come in useful in your own work.” WritingTryingHardMightNovelFiguresConsciousMadDevicesCompelling Author:Sarah Waters
“Get Carter remains among the great crime novels, a lean, muscular portrait of a man stumbling along the hard edge - toward redemption. Ted Lewis cuts to the bone.” MenHardNovelCuttingCrimeRemainsEdgesBonesRedemptionPortraitsCarterStumblingCrime Novels Author:James Sallis
“Writing a novel is a very hard thing to do because it covers so long a space of time, and if you get discouraged it is not a bad sign, but a good one. If you think you are not doing it well, you are thinking the way real novelists do. I never knew one who did not feel greatly discouraged at times, and some get desperate, and I have always found that to be a good symptom.” IfsThinkingWayFeelsWritingWellsLongRealHardFoundSpaceNovelNovelistsThings To DoDesperateSymptomsDiscouragedHard Things Author:Maxwell Perkins
“The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.” WritingHardEasyNovelStrangeStrange Things Author:Karl Ove Knausgard
“You will stay up all night reading this brilliant and devastating novel the way you might have with a new best friend in junior high-one whose revelations thrilled and terrified you, and whose raw, hard-earned wisdom remade the way you saw the world. It evokes the genius of Angela Pneumans canonical progenitors: Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Walker Percy. Lay It on My Heart is a gorgeous, riveting, and unforgettable book.” WorldWayHeartBookHardMightNightReadingNovelSawsGeniusMy HeartLaysBrilliantRevelationsTerrifiedGorgeousAll NightJuniorsEvokeWalkersUnforgettableJunior HighAngelaUp All Night Author:Julie Orringer
“While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels, I liked them. And there was a period when I read many of them. I absorbed the form, and I liked it, it was a good one, mostly the hard-boiled school, you know, Chandler, Hammett, and their heirs. That was the direction that interested me most.” KnowsWritingHardSchoolFormReadingNovelPeriodsDetectivesHeirsWriting Poems Author:Paul Auster
“Others, amounting to four novels and a mess of short stories which I did not think worth preserving, I have done my best to eliminate from the record by refusing all requests for permission to reprint them, and I hope I have done a good job of making them hard to unearth.” ThinkingHardDoneStoriesJobsLiteratureNovelRecordsFourMessShort StoryPermissionGood JobRequest Author:Leslie Charteris