“The single most important technique for making progress is to write ten words. Doesn't matter if you're badly stuck, or your day is completely jam-packed, or you're away from your computer - carry a small paper notebook and write a sentence of description while you're waiting on line at a coffee shop. I think of this as baiting a hook. Even if you have a few days in a row where nothing comes except those ten words, I find that as long as you have to think about the novel enough to write ten words, the chances are that more will come.” IfsThinkingWritingLongImportantMatterEnoughWaitingLinesChanceNovelProgressTenPaperComputerSentencesTechniqueCoffeeStuckShopsDescriptionHookJamChances AreNotebookCoffee Shop Author:Naomi Novik
“originality" is everyone's aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T.S.] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté: "It is exactly as wasteful for a poet to do what has been done already as for a biologist to rediscover Mendel's discoveries.” Has BeensStatesDoneNovelPoetDiscoveryAimTechniqueSurprisingOriginalityBiologistScientific DiscoveryVetsEliotMendel Author:Randall Jarrell
“It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.” WantNeedsWritingYearsBelieveTwoImportantArtistI BelieveEasyNovelToo MuchHabitConcernedPressureExpectedTechniqueNovelistsTwo YearsRoutineNot InterestedImprovingAvoidingEasy To GetTime Of Need Author:Chinua Achebe
“Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at night, but do not enter into relations. But not for the novel.” PeopleWritingStoriesNightNovelLateRelationTechniqueBarsShort Story Author:W. H. Auden
“Throughout my career I've struggled to encourage people to read my books on a more metaphorical level. I'm less attached to my settings than, for example, Saul Bellow. The setting of a novel for me is just a part of the technique. I choose it at the end.” PeopleBookEndsLevelsCareersNovelExampleTechniqueSettingSettingsMetaphorical Author:Kazuo Ishiguro
“I'm not imprisoned in any one medium. In films I use techniques that are not necessarily what other directors attempt. When I write novels I also use techniques which can run counter to those that a novelist would use.” WritingUseRunningFilmNovelDirectorsTechniqueMediumsNovelists Author:Philippe Claudel
“I love to read and teach experimental fiction but yes, neither this work nor my first novel is really that experimental. It uses some experimental techniques but in the end, I would not say that it is experimental. I'm not sure why. I do a lot of writing on my own, and I have always just written this way.” WayWritingFirstsEndsUseMy OwnFictionTeachNovelWrittenTechniqueNot SureLove To Read Author:Porochista Khakpour
“I wouldn't have thought that the techniques of story-telling, which is what the novel is after all, can vary much because there are two things involved.There's a story and there's a listener, whose attention you have to keep. Now the only way in which you can keep a reader's attention to a story is in his wanting to know what is going to happen next. This puts a fairly close restriction on the method you must use.” KnowsWayTwoStoriesUseHappensNextAttentionNovelReaderInvolvedMethodTechniqueTwo ThingsListenersRestrictionVary Author:William Golding
“Experimental novels are sometimes terribly clever and very seldom read. But the story that appeals to the child sitting on your knee is the one that satisfies the curiosity we all have about what happened then, and then, and then. This is the final restriction put on the technique of telling a story. A basic thing called story is built into the human condition. It's what we are; it's something to which we react.” HumansChildrenSometimesStoriesNovelHappenedConditionsSittingBuiltFinalsCuriosityTechniqueCleverAppealsKneesHuman ConditionRestrictionBasic Things Author:William Golding