- You should never be in awe of your own style.
- Writer’s indecision= writer’s block
- You have to write anything first, just like what Francois Sagan said ‘ I have to write to begin to think’ it may help a lot for you.
- It eats imagination to think about money so better forget about it first.
- The most important part of the novel that you write is the first page.
- Fact: no-one has ever won the Booker Prize apart from Hilary Mantel, and you are not Hilary Mantel so better know that you won’t win the Booker Prize.
- The end lasts forever and the first draft is the beginning of the end.
- It’s the word you choose not to use and it isn’t the words you choose to use.
- Adverbs dilute.
- Lower your expectations and start raising your efforts.
- You’ll never know real negativity until you tell people you are writing a novel, so just ignore discouragement. Never let negativities get into you.
- A function is the greatest miracle since the wheel and track changes.
- You should write as though your mom will never read it.
- Think about what you want the words to achieve and forget about what you want the book to achieve.
- Be ship-shape. An ocean liner might be big, but all the screws need to be tight. Or you end up drowning. So, y’know, observe each sentence as if it was the only one.
- It’s acceptable to write about people you know, as long as you change their names.
- You are in trouble if you write about a dog and that dog dies.
- Jeanette Winterson once told me to change the phrase ‘epiphanic moment’ to ‘moment of epiphany’. That is the single greatest piece of advice anyone has ever given.
- That it will be the best book you can write if you write about a book you most want to read.
- If you write in the first person, people will think that the views of that person are your own views. Don’t let that stop you writing Hitler’s fictional autobiography. I just thought you should know.
- It will infect you with greatness if you read about Graham Greene.
- The hardest bit of writing always comes at the 30,000 word mark. Keep going. After 50,000 the hill slopes in your favor.
- You’ll notice more mistakes if you read it aloud.
- Love is the most important ingredient. Love of words. Of your characters and their flaws. Of truth. You are playing God, but it has to be a loving God.
- Enjoy it! There is nothing as exciting in this world as roaming the beautiful wilds of the human imagination. There really isn’t.