2. Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, emassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a
pretentious ass. -David Ogilvy
3. If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second
greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The
Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them
now, while they’re happy. – Dorothy Parker
4. Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their
mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the
morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not
make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave
home. -Paul Theroux
5. I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before
developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. — Harper
Lee
6. You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ―
Jack London
7. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout
with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were
not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. —
George Orwell
8. There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows
what they are. ― W. Somerset Maugham
9. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time — or the tools
— to write. Simple as that. – Stephen King
10. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for
them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think
is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. – Neil Gaiman
11. Imagine that you are dying. If you had a terminal disease would you
finish this book? Why not? The thing that annoys this 10-weeks-to-live self is
the thing that is wrong with the book. So change it. Stop arguing with
yourself. Change it. See? Easy. And no one had to die. – Anne Enright
12. If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the
hardest things people do. – William Zinsser
13. Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use
semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely
nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college. – Kurt Vonnegut
14. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest
Hemingway
15. Write drunk, edit sober. – Ernest Hemingway
16. Get through a draft as quickly as possible. Hard to know the shape of
the thing until you have a draft. Literally, when I wrote the last page of my
first draft of Lincoln’s Melancholy I thought, Oh, shit, now I get the shape of
this. But I had wasted years, literally years, writing and re-writing the first
third to first half. The old writer’s rule applies: Have the courage to write
badly. – Joshua Wolf Shenk
17. Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. – Mark
Twain
18. Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll
always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than
you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing
that — but you are the only you.― Neil Gaiman
19. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. – Oscar
Wilde
20. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ―
Ray Bradbury
21. Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.– Lev Grossman
