writers quote daily

McKee on what makes a unique story

A story is not only what you have to say but how you say it. If content is cliche, the telling will be cliche. But if your vision is deep and original, your story design will be unique. Conversely, if the telling is conventional and predictable, it will demand stereotypical roles to act out well-worn behaviors. But if the story design is innovative, then settings, characters, and ideas must be equally fresh to fullfil it. We shape the telling to fit the substance, rework the substance to support the design.--Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

McKee on the need for craft

Without craft, the best a writer can do is snatch the first idea off the top of his head, then sit helpless in front of his own work, unable to answer the dreaded questions: Is it good? Or is it sewage? If seage, what do I do? The conscious mind, fixated on thse terrible questions, blocks the subsconscious. But when the conscious mind is put to work on the objective task of executing the craft, the spontaneous surfaces. Mastery of craft frees the subconscious.--McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Yolan on writing daily

Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.--Jane Yolen

Masters on the love of books

...books are piled on our tables, spill in heaps from stuffed shelves, and lie about the floor and on chairs like spoiled pets. I have a miser's greed for books, and I pick them up at random to read a passage or follow an argument or inhabit a poem. I carry them from room to room, portable transitions of thought, of the past into the present, only to put them down in a maddening disorder. Guests sometime ask, "Have you read all these books?" My answer must be no. But they are there for me to read, or reread someday. If I am to have welath it is in my books, and when I regard their spines presed together on the bookshelves, observe the casual sculptures they make on a table, my spirit becomes cozily furnished.--Hillary Masters, In Rooms of Memory: Essays

Wright on writing a book

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.--Stephen Wright

Vorse on the art of writing

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.--Mary Heaton Vorse

Southey on the writing process

By writing much, one learns to write well.--Robert Southey

Sheldon on writing

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.--Sidney Sheldon

Rilke on the writing process

What is needed, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude. Going into yourself and meeting no one for hours on end--that is what you must be able to attain.--Rainer Maria Rilke

Pratchett on writer's block

There is no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.--Terry Pratchett