What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.
C.S. LEWIS
I publish to be read. It’s the only thing that interests me about publication. So I employ all the strategies I know to capture the reader’s attention, stimulate curiosity, make the page as dense as possible and as easy as possible to turn. But once I have the reader’s attention I feel it is my right to pull it in whichever direction I choose. I don’t think the reader should be indulged as a consumer, because he isn’t one. Literature that indulges the tastes of the reader is a degraded literature. My goal is to disappoint the usual expectations and inspire new ones.
ELENA FERRANTE
Sitting out in the hammock one eveninga, staring at the stars, an idea came to me. It formed and formed some more, and in just a few minutes I knew I had another project. I’ve code-named it “Starshine” for now. This story involves the…
And finally, after much revision, System Seven is ready. With a word count of 174,000 and a page count of 500 pages, it’s leaner and cleaner. System Seven is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.
Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you’re certain it’s as good as your finite powers can enable it to be. -Rose Tremain
There are a few basic expectations a reader has from a story. One is that it will move them, somewhere – in either the world, in their mind, or in their heart… preferably all three. Because reading is escape, movement is a…
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.
-WINSTON CHURCHILL
What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what’s it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.
ISAAC ASIMOV