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On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft QUOTES

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft QUOTES

1 " Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

2 " To write is human, to edit is divine. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

3 " A boy who once wiped his ass with poison ivy probably doesn't belong in a smart people's club. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

4 " Words have weight. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

5 " The road to hell is paved with adverbs. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

6 " The scariest moment is always just before you start. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

7 " you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

8 " Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

9 " Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

10 " Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

11 " In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

12 " Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

13 " If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

14 " You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

15 " So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

16 " Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

17 " Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

18 " I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

19 " Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

20 " Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street. "

― Stephen King , On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft