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1 " When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of these subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge. But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl. "
― Ernest Hemingway , Death in the Afternoon
2 " There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar. "
― Amy Bloom , A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories
3 " The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work. "
― Robert Frost
4 " The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it. "
― Ernest Hemingway
5 " The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more carefully than that one should never be dependent. Hence the novice or still unsuccessful writer, who has enough trouble believing in himself, has the added burden of shame. It’s hard to be a good writer and a guilty person; a lack of self-respect creeps into one’s prose. "
― John Gardner , On Becoming a Novelist
6 " You don’t become a good writer overnight. It takes persistence and repetition to gain mastery. "
― Israelmore Ayivor ,
7 " Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid. "
― M. John Harrison
8 " Always write exactly what you’re feeling at the exact moment when writing something like poetry or an emotional novel. Put yourself, pour all emotions into your work…make yourself cry, feel joy if you are writing joyful things, feel lovey if it calls for it…just put your heart and soul into all that you do…then you will be a good writer when you can make whoever reads your work, feel." -Nina Jean Slack "
9 " You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed. "
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
10 " Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite. "
― Edward Albee
11 " It is " vibration" that creates our world. Everyone vibrates. We always utter words in our mind. Thus we create sounds continuously. Frequency differs. Tuning your frequency brings the differences. A good writer has the creativity to polish the broken piano to tune it up in a right tune. Reading their books is the key to choose your favorite frequencies. Now start vibrating and note it down. "
12 " In nothing is the difference between the Americans and the Soviets so marked as in the attitude, not only toward writers, but of writers toward their system. For in the Soviet Union the writer's job is to encourage, to celebrate, to explain, and in every way to carry forward the Soviet system. Whereas in America, and in England, a good writer is the watch-dog of society. His job is to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices, to stigmatize its faults. And this is the reason that in America neither society nor government is very fond of writers. The two are completely opposite approaches toward literature. "
― John Steinbeck , A Russian Journal
13 " You can't be a good writer in the States anymore because to be a good one you have to have a country where you can be poor and still eat, and still make your living standard secondary to your writing. Thoreau himself couldn't do that in the States today. "
14 " You may think that you don't want to read about the problems of being brought up Mennonite, but the great thing about books is that you'll read anything a good writer wants you to read. "
― Nick Hornby , Housekeeping vs. the Dirt
15 " Thinking is a great joy for a good writer and a great torture for the bad one! "
16 " To receive the compliments of being a good writer really annoys me, as this has been my perception that a writer as such has no value, it is the readers who invest their thought process, give life to dead words, coupled with their own imagination, thus syncing the content to their tastes and sensibilities, that matter. "
17 " I am frequently asked by people if I would like to be known or remembered for being a Great Poet or a Great Writer. The simple answer is this:There are many Great Poets and even more Great Writers, thus I answer and say, I would like to be remembered as a capable poet that was a good writer that possessed a truly loving soul, and that all may know, for me, this was great enough. "
― Tonny K. Brown
18 " On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost all of us will produce a lot of really lousy stories before we start to get good. (Not all of us will choose to publish those lousy stories, but that's a whole separate discussion...) "
― Jim C. Hines , The Prosekiller Chronicles: Rise of the Spider Goddess -- An Annotated Novel
19 " Can I possibly be a good writer if I'm not healed form the story I'm telling? Will I be able to go deep enough if people find out the truth? "
― Lori Lesko
20 " Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine. "