Writing is the opposite of reading, only harder. Your average bump on a log can read a book, but a log never has.

Writing 

"I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark." Henry David Thoreau 

"Writing is an adventure." Winston Churchill 

"Know something, sugar? Stories only happen to people who can tell them." Allan Gurganus 

 "... only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things." Anton Chekhov 

"A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightening." James Dicke

 "It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."Robert Benchley 

"You ask for the distinction between the terms "Editor" and "Publisher": an editor selects manuscripts; a publisher selects editors." M. Lincoln Schuster 

"A writer lives, at least, in a state of astonishment. Beneath any feeling he has of the good or evil of the world lies a deeper one of wonder at it all. To transmit that feeling, he writes." William Sansom 

"I don't like to write, but I love to have written." Michael Kanin

"However great a man's natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once." Jean Jacques Roussea 

"You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country." Robert Frost 

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."Oscar Wilde 

"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." Cyril Connolly 

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork."Peter de Vries

          "A writer is working when he's staring out of the window."Burton Rascoe

"The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention." Ezra Pound 

"I try to leave out the parts that people skip." Elmore Leonard

"Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped." Lillian Helman 

"I never knew what was meant by choice of words. It was one word or none." Robert Frost

"Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of them…Avoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation."Jacques Barzun

"You must write every single day of your life…You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads….may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world." Ray Bradbury

"What a writer brings to any story is an attitude…" John Gregory Dunne

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." E.L. Doctorow

"The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly…Once you've got some words looking back at you, you can take two or three - throw them away and look for others." Bernard Malamud

"Write in recollection and amazement for yourself." Jack Kerouac

"If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Toni Morrison

"To be clear is the first duty of a writer; to charm and to please are graces to be acquired later." Brander Matthews

"In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give to your style." Sydney Smith

"…your reader is at least as bright as you are." William Maxwell

"…you have to develop a conscience and if on top of that you have talent so much the better. But if you have talent without conscience, you are just one of many thousand journalists." F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Whether or not you write well, write bravely." Bill Stout

"The writer's duty is to keep on writing…" William Styron
"Never trust the artist. Trust the tale." D.H. Lawrence

"Caress the detail, the divine detail." Vladimir Nabokov

"Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better."
"The first draft of anything is sh*t." Ernest Hemingway 

"Use the right word and not its second cousin." Mark Twain

"Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write." Robert Penn Warren

"You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing." Doris Lessing

"A woman must have money and room of her own if she is to write fiction." Virginia Woolf
"Stick to the point." W. Somerset Maugham

"Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time…The wait is simply too long." Leonard S. Bernstein

"The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter."Marcel Proust

"I seat myself at the typewriter and hope, and lurk." Mignon Eberhart

"The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting." Arthur Schopenhauer

"Planning to write is not writing. Outlining…researching…talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing." E.L. Doctorow

"When genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." D.H. Lawrence
"Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective." Ernest Hemingway
"I write the first sentence and trust in God for the next."Laurence Sterne

"Writing a poem is discovering." Robert Frost

"If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average." Derek Walcott

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug." Mark TwainV.S. Pritchett

"Write what should not be forgotten…" Isabel Allende

"Even the most productive writers are expert dawdlers…"Donald M. Murray

"Too many writers are trying to write with too shallow an education. Whether they go to college or not is immaterial…a good writer needs a sense of the history of literature to be successful as a writer." James Kisner

"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay." Mark Twain

"You have typewriters, presses. And a huge audience. How about raising hell?" Jenkin Lloyd Jones

"Revise and revise and revise - the best thought will come after the printer has snatched away the copy." Michael Morahan

"In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic." Leo Tolstoy

"Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward…" Franz Kafka

"The first rule, indeed by itself virtually a sufficient condition for good style, is to have something to say." Arthur Schopenhauer

"Suspect all your favorite sentences." Kenneth Atchity

"Don't overwrite description in a story - you haven't got time."Elizabeth Spencer

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."
Somerset Maugham

"Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style." Matthew Arnold

"…writing comes more easily if you have something to say."Sholem Asch

"You fail only if you stop writing." Ray Bradbury

"Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing…."Bernard Malamud 

"Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to." Somerset Maugham
"Thoughts fly and words go on foot. Therein lies all the drama of a writer." Julien Green

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." Thomas Mann

"…therein is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident." H.L. Mencken

"Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory." Chateaubriand

"You must write for yourself, above all. That is [your] only hope of creating something beautiful." Gustave Flaubert 

"Writing well is at one and the same time good thinking, good feeling, and good expression; it is having wit, soul, and taste, all together." Buffon

"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make." Truman Capote

"I always do the first line well, but I have trouble with the others." Moliere

"A writer lives, at best, in a state of astonishment." William Sansom 

"All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath." F. Scott Fitzgerald 

"You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else." Grace Paley 

"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else." Gloria Steinem 

Storytelling tips from a talented Pixar storyteller.

These rules were originally tweeted by Emma Coates, a Pixar Story Artist. Incredible insight into the inner workings of the story juggernaut that is Pixar:

1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

So, you've written a book. How novel! Before toasting to your success, Charlie Jane Anders offers some advice on checking yourself before wrecking yourself.

4 Danger Signs To Search For, Before Sending Off Your Novel

Congratulations! Your epic space-opera novel is finished, and you're preparing to fire off your query letters to agents. But even though you've read your manuscript a hundred times, you still may have missed some weaknesses. Here's how to find them.

I've been struggling with this very issue for the past few days, as I prepare to inflict unleash my epic fantasy novel on the publishing world. At this point, I've pored over every sentence several times, and I've gotten two rounds of detailed feedback. And yet, when I started doing a word-search to try and identify some potential trouble spots, I was shocked to find how many puny sentences still lurked in my text, leaching the vitality out of the writing.

And in case it needs saying yet again — this is advice, based on what seems to improve my own writing. I know of no ironclad rules for good writing, other than "Tell the story the most excellent way you can."

That said, here are some word searches that seemed to uncover the greatest sins:

1) Adverbs.

In a nutshell, you do a search for "ly" in your manuscript. This won't find every adverb — several of them don't end in "ly" — and you'll get some false positives, like "fly" or "sly." But it's close enough for government work. And if you're getting overwhelmed, you can always add a space after "ly" — that way, you only get "ly" at the end of a word. (You'll have to do separate searches for "ly" followed by a comma or period in that case.)

I already did a whole post about adverbs before — but in a nutshell, not all adverbs are bad, and you don't have to eradicate them all from your work. But you may find that adverbs serve as signposts that lead you to some terrible writing. One example I found my in my own novel was the word "obviously," which usually signaled that that someone was stating the obvious. As in:

When we dropped out of hyperspeed at the rendezvous coordinates, we found nothing but rubble and trace radiation where the planet Karma V was supposed to be. Obviously, the Bad Uncles had gotten there first.

You know what? It's obvious enough that you don't even need to explain it. Cut cut cut. The same goes for "clearly." (That's not an excerpt from my novel, by the way.) I also found that I had an unhealthy addiction to "impossibly" — which is fine to use once or twice, but can get really old. ("Impossibly big" is a contradiction in terms — which is fine as a stylistic point once or twice, but after a while you just sound like you're full of crap.)

I found a surprising number of adverbs in my supposedly finished novel. I wound up keeping about half of them.

2) Sentences beginning with "It."

Just like adverbs, this can be fine sometimes. "It" is kind of a bland word, with no personality of its own, but it has plenty of uses. The main problem with "it" is that it's a pronoun, so you must be absolutely clear about what "it" refers to. And when a sentence begins with "it," that can be another red flag pointing to bad writing. Here are a few examples of problem sentences, which I'm making up on the fly, beginning with "it":

• It was worse than I'd feared. (What's it? The situation? The predicament? Instead of telling us it's worse, why not dramatize?)
• It bothered me that I had to watch my best friend die. (Why not, "I couldn't bear to watch my best friend die?")
• It made sense that the Dark Legion would want to deploy their planet-crusher weapon to Earth next. (Again, what's it? Why not just start the sentence with the planet-crushing, or the reason why this is a good strategy? Or put an actual person into your sentence — "I could see why the Dark Legion would want to deploy their planet crusher.")
• It caught me by surprise: A laser snake, fangs dripping with deadly photons. ("The laser snake caught me by surprise" is way better, because then your reader is surprised too, instead of being told there's a surprise, followed by finding out what the surprise is.)

There's loads more where that came from. In general, when you have an "it," there should be a clear antecedent, and that's less likely if "it" is the start of your sentence. At least some of the time, any sentence that begins with "it" will turn out to be something you can safely cut from your book: an instance of spoon-feeding the reader information that he or she can already glean elsewhere, or a bit of throat clearing. ("It made sense that blah" is almost always going to be spoon-feeding, for example. If it really makes sense, you don't have to insist that it makes sense. If it doesn't, then well... Saying it won't make it so.)

At least half the time, you may decide that "It" is a perfectly fine way to begin a sentence. But you may be surprised by how many times "it" can't justify its existence once you zero in on it. (You may also want to do a word search for the phrase "it was," which could be lurking in the middle of your sentences somewhere, and could also be a sign of rot.)

3) There was, or there were.

Most people will tell you to keep your use of the verb "to be" to an absolute minimum. But you can't avoid using "is" or "was" altogether, and like everything else, "to be" has its place in your prose. Other verbs will always be more dynamic and exciting, although they also risk being more purple. (For example, "The Dark Fortress was on top of a large-ish mountain" is bland, and "The Dark Fortress loomed over a large-ish mountain" is more thrilling. But "The Dark Fortress vibrated with dark ominousness, over a large-ish mountain" is perhaps too much.)

The point is, you absolutely should not do a word search for "is", "was" and "were" in your novel — you will go nuts and start clawing your face off before you get a tenth of the way through. Unless you're the Zen master of verbs, armed with total verb mindfulness, you will have used the verb "to be" a fair amount, and you just can't slog through every instance to see if it's carrying its own weight.

But you absolutely should do a quick search for "there was" and "there were" — which are pretty clearcut instances of the verb "to be" flopping around when a stronger verb could be flexing its muscles. Here's an example:

There were a couple of Evil Nephews guarding the Outer Inner Sanctum, and they looked like the horn-toothed kind.

You can change that to "Two Evil Nephews paraded in front of the stone door to the Outer Inner Sanctum" — notice how as soon as the verb is active, you start seeing the scene a bit more. Once they're parading, you want to know what they're parading in front of, and that means you see the stone door. Instead of "paraded," you can also go for "stood at attention" or "stood watch" or "brandished their Uru spears" or whatever. They don't have to be dancing a jig — but making them the subject of the sentence instead of "there" turns them into living, breathing Evil Nephews. They're automatically more formidable and threatening as a result.

You might not need to eradicate every single instance of "there was" or "there were" in your novel — but most of them should probably be thwacked with an Uru spear. And if you find a lot of them, it's a wee warning sign that your use of "to be" might remain a bit too generous.

I found a surprising number of examples of "there was" and "there were" still skulking around my novel, and I pretty much exterminated them all. They seemed to crop up most of all in the descriptive or scene-setting passages, which is where lazy writing often hides. A few sentences in a row of description make a cozy nest for a bland verb construction to crawl into and hide.

4) Was being, or were being.

Just as most experts will tell you to avoid the verb "to be" as much as possible, they'll also warn you away from passive verbs. It's the difference between

Captain Samson was being thrown off the catwalk by a Bad Uncle

and

A Bad Uncle lifted Captain Samson over his head and hurled her over the edge of the catwalk.

You want the subject of the sentence to be the person who's actually doing something — not the person who's having it done to them. Sure, we feel bad for Captain Samson in this instance, but that doesn't make her the subject.

If you're like me, you've probably been indoctrinated pretty heavily with the hatred of passive sentences. This loathing has been drummed into us — so you've probably already made an effort to slash and burn any sentences whose main actor wasn't the subject. But what if some of these passive verbs have been overlooked? How can you find them?

There's no way to do a word search to eradicate passive verb constructions altogether (unless you really want to look at every instance of the verb "to be" in your book, in which case see above.) But you can do a lot of trouble-shooting by looking for "was being" and "were being." These aren't just passive verb constructions — they're also the verb "to be" twice in a row.

Not only is something being done to your character, but it's also in the process of being done. So we don't even get to see the action happening, we sort of see it as a frozen tableau of passivity. It's getting done, and at some point, it'll be completed, but there's no rush or anything. You could, you know, go get a sandwich and come back, and Captain Samson would still be in the middle of being tossed off the catwalk.

Update: Anindita on Twitter has a great suggestion for another set of phrases you can search for. Try doing a word search for "he saw" or "she saw" and "he felt" or "she felt." These are instances where you're dampening the impact of what's going on by filtering it through someone else's perceptions, which is automatically less compelling.

And that's all I've got, in terms of last-minute bug-hunting. The purpose here isn't just to be nit-picky and OCD, though — it's to get you to look at your novel in a different way, one last time. That's why I mentioned that these searches are for people who've already read the nearly-final draft a zillion times. Once you single out one particular sentence construction and start looking for it throughout your novel, you'll break up your usual reading pattern and you may find yourself noticing other little problems that hadn't jumped out at you before.

Maybe reading a bunch of sentences in a row with "was being" in them will make you think about how you portray action. Or maybe you'll skim through all your different descriptive passages and notice some ticks that you are prone to, which you hadn't noticed before because they're always spaced a few pages apart and buried in descriptive prose. Anything that gives you a new awareness of what you're doing, at the sentence level, can only brighten your novel, even if you end up not changing some stuff.

And in the end, zippier writing is Captain Samson's best ally in the fight against the Bad Uncles. If the readers' eyes aren't glazing over, the story will race by faster, and Captain Samson's inevitable victory will be that much juicier.

Creative people love getting advice. Here's some now!

A few important life lessons

Lesson 1: Naked Wife

A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower

when the doorbell rings. The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs

downstairs. When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next door neighbor.

Before she says a word, Bob says, “I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.” After

thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front

of Bob.

After a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 dollars and leaves. The woman wraps

back up in the towel and goes back upstairs. When she gets to the bathroom,

her husband asks,…

“Who was that?” “It was Bob the next door neighbor,” she replies. “Great!”

the husband says, “Did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?”

Moral of the story:
If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your

shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure.

Lesson 2

A sales rep, an administration clerk, and the manager are walking to lunch when

they find an antique oil lamp. They rub it and a Genie comes out. The Genie says,

“I’ll give each of you just one wish” “Me first! Me first!” says the administration

clerk. “I want to be in the Bahamas, driving a speedboat, without a care in the

world.” Poof! She’s gone. “Me next! Me next!” says the sales rep. “I want to be in Hawaii,relaxing on the beach with my personal masseuse, an endless supply of

Pina Coladas and the love of my life.” Poof! He’s gone. “OK, you’re up,” the

Genie says to the manager. The manager says, “I want those two back in the

office after lunch.”

Moral of the story: Always let your boss have the first say.

Lesson 3

A priest offered a lift to a Nun. She got in and crossed her legs, forcing her gown

to reveal a leg. The priest nearly had an accident. After controlling the car, he

stealthily slid his hand up her leg. The nun said,”Father, remember Psalm 129?”

The priest removed his hand. But,changing gears, he let his hand slide up her leg

again. The nun once again said, “Father, remember Psalm 129?” The priest

apologized “Sorry sister but the flesh is weak.” Arriving at the convent, the nun

went on her way. On his arrival at the church, the priest rushed to look up Psalm

129. It said, “Go forth and seek, further up, you will find glory.”

Moral of the story: If you are not well informed in your job, you might miss a

great opportunity.

Lesson 4

A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A rabbit asked him,”Can

I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?” The crow answered: “Sure,

why not.” So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested.

A fox jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Moral of the story: To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting

very high up.

Lesson 5: Power of Charisma

A turkey was chatting with a bull “I would love to be able to get to the

top of that tree,” sighed the turkey, but I haven’t got the energy.” “Well,

why don’t you nibble on my droppings?” replied the bull. “They’re packed

with nutrients.” The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it

gave him enough strength to reach the lowest branch of the tree. The next

day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch. Finally

after a fourth night, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree.

Soon he was spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Moral of the story: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it wont

keep you there.

Lesson 6

A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold the bird froze

and fell to the ground into a large field. While he was lying there, a cow

came by and dropped some dung on him. As the frozen bird lay there in

the pile of cow dung, he began to realize how warm he was. The dung was

actually thawing him out! He lay there all warm and happy, and soon began

to sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate.

Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung,

and promptly dug him out and ate him.

Moral of the story:
1. Not everyone who shits on you is your enemy
2. Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend
3. And when you’re in deep shit, it’s best to keep your mouth shut!