“It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.” IfsWritingKindStoriesSeemsNovelCastsMetaphorStatementsPhrases Author:Hortense Calisher
“With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page.” YearsI CanSometimesTurnsMy OwnNovelIssuesEmotionalMonthsPagesMetaphorEnormousReactionsResolveMy Own LifeEmotional Reactions Author:Chuck Palahniuk
“I have more self-doubt than any writer I've ever known.... The positive aspect of self-doubt - if you can channel it into useful activity instead of being paralyzed by it - is that by the time you reach the end of a novel, you know precisely why you made every decision in the narrative, the multiple purposes of every metaphor and image.” IfsKnowsMadeEndsSelfPurposeDecisionKnownNovelDoubtActivityAspectMetaphorNarrativeMultipleParalyzedSelf-doubt Author:Dean Koontz
“I'm not conscious of my own themes as I write first drafts, no, and in fact, I work hard to stay in that unconscious space and not ask myself what the novel is about or what my metaphors might mean because then, I think, you're just dead in the water.” ThinkingWritingFirstsMeanHardFactsMightAsksWaterMy OwnSpaceNovelHard WorkConsciousMetaphorThemeUnconscious Author:Laurie Foos
“To know what you want to say is not the best condition for writing a novel. Novels go happiest when you discover something you did not know you knew: an insight into one of your opaque characters, a metaphor that startles you... a truth... that used to elude you.” KnowsWantWritingCharacterUsedNovelConditionsMetaphorInsightWhat You WantEludeOpaqueElude You Author:Norman Mailer
“I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction is like surfing, while writing a novel is like navigating with your car. So when you navigate with your car, you want to get somewhere. When you surf, you don't want to get somewhere, you just don't want to fall off your board.” WantGivingWritingFallFictionNovelCarMetaphorBoardsSurfingSurfNavigateWriting Short Author:Etgar Keret