The Hideaway: December 2006

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Something Witty. . .

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

~Matthew Arnold

In science there is a dictum: don't add an experiment to an experiment. Don't make things unnecessarily complicated. In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don't ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story.

~Ben Bova

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than

death.

~Robert Fulghum

To most readers the word 'fiction' is an utter fraud. They are entirely convinced that each character has an exact counterpart in real life and that any small discrepancy with that counterpart is a simple error on the author's part. Consequently, they are totally at a loss if anything essential is altered. Make Abraham Lincoln a dentist, put the Gettysburg Address on his tongue, and nobody will recognize it.

~Louis Auchincloss

Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.

~Gene Fowler

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.

~Anatole France

When writing a novel, thatÕs pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.'

~Neil Gaiman

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

~F. Scott Fitzgerald

Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.

~Graycie Harmon

Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.

~Marilyn Manson.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

~Theodore Roosevelt .

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.

~Samuel Lover.

Writing is a struggle against silence.

~Carlos Fuentes.

If you haven't got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you'll only have to throw away the first three pages.

~William Campbell Gault

Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.

~Elizabeth Bowen

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.

~Ray Bradbury

First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!

~Ray Bradbury

Beware of self-indulgence. The romance surrounding the writing profession carries several myths: that one must suffer in order to be creative; that one must be cantankerous and objectionable in order to be bright; that ego is paramount over skill; that one can rise to a level from which one can tell the reader to go to hell. These myths, if believed, can ruin you.

~David Brin

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

~David Brin

Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.

~Anatole Broyard

It is perfectly okay to write garbage--as long as you edit brilliantly.

~C. J. Cherryh

Books aren't written, they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it...

~Michael Crichton

Never throw up on an editor.

~Ellen Datlow

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

~L. Sprague de Camp

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

~Peter de Vries

As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture.

~Fyodor Dostoevsky

To write good SF today...you must push further and harder, reach deeper into your own mind until you break through into the strange and terrible country wherein live your own dreams.

~Gardner Dozois

There is no method except to be very intelligent.

~T. S. Eliot

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

~Harlan Ellison

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

~Harlan Ellison

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance--that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is to be--curiosity--to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got it or not.

~William Faulkner

In Narnia, Mr. T is a gigantic T-Rex with a lion's tail hanging out of his mouth.

The Hideaway

Monday, December 18, 2006

Something Witty. . .

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