Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

Don't market yourself. Editors and readers don't know what they want until they see it. Scratch what itches. Write what you need to write, feed the hunger for meaning in your life. Play at the serious questions of life and death.

Don't people know that it's the hardest work in the world? Joseph Conrad said that he had loaded hundredweights of coal all day long on a ship in Amsterdam in the wintertime, and that is was nothing to the energy demanded for a day's work writing.

Don’t read Variety. Don’t listen to gossip. Don’t live in L.A., and write.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

Don't outline your stories. A lot of fiction workshops say you should. I say the opposite. I quote Grace Paley: "We write what we don't know we know.

Don't rush or force the ending. All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes.

Don't say you don't know! It's because of Kim. Meaning there's no photo that I would have put up by myself, or next to one of my smarty friends, that would have got that amount of likes. So now you take this photo that has that amount of likes, and it has a flower wall from the same guy who does the Lanvin shows, and it has a couture Givenchy dress and Givenchy tuxedo in it. That's the point. Now the thing that is the most popular is also communicating the highest level of creativity. The concept of Kimye has more cultural significance than what Page Six could write.

Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be tired. Be confused. Be depressed. Be annoyed. Don’t hedge your prose with little timidities. Good writing is lean and confident.

Don't move to Seattle and write a stupid sex advice column. That's a waste of time and you need to grow up and get serious.

Don't tear up the page and start over again when you write a bad line-try to write your way out of it. Make mistakes and plunge on. Writing is a means of discovery, always.

Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.

Don't talk about it - you'll talk it away. Let the ideas flow from your mind to the page without exposing them to air. Especially hot air.

Don't think about how your characters sound, but how they see. Watch the world through their eyes - study the extraordinary and the mundane through their particular perspective. Walk around the block with them, stroll the rooms they live in, figure out what objects on the cluttered dining room table they would inevitably stare at the longest, and then learn why.

Don't try and mimic men - how they operate, how they do business, how they direct, write or are creative. They are not perfect. Women do it all differently, and that should be celebrated. We believe in collaboration, we are empathetic and sympathetic and we do tend to connect to stories and people on a different level. And this should all be celebrated.

Don't try to anticipate an ideal reader - or any reader. He/she might exist - but is reading someone else.

Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new.

Don't try to write to the trend of the moment.

Don't try to outguess what's going on in publishing, and write what you want to write.

Don’t try to write a novel. Write short stories and then figure out how to connect them.

Don't try to write too much in a single session. One thousand words a day is quite enough. Stop after about four or five hours.

Don't try to follow any trends, just concentrate on writing great songs and knowing your instrument. All the other stuff will fall into place.

Don't wait for success, but for the respect and interest of those who read you. At the start it could be a classmate, someone who shares your interests. Before sending off the manuscript for a novel to a publishing house, it would be a good idea to try writing short stories, and publishing them in a local magazine.

Don't waste time looking for a better pencil:  learn to write better.

Don’t underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor.

Don't wait for the muse. She has a lousy work ethic. Writers just write.

Don't worry about never having time to write. Just write what you can in the time you do have and give yourself a big clap on the back, followed by a double latte and a blueberry muffin.

Don't try to write anything you can't feel - it will be a failure - 'echoes nothing worth

Don't wait until you're 'in the mood.' Get into the mood by writing.

Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.

Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink.

Don't write naughty words on the wall if you can't spell!

Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.

Don’t you love quotations? I am immensely fond of them; a certain proof of erudition.... [I]f you should happen to write an insipid poem... send it to me, and my fiat shall crown you with immortality.

Don't you think that's the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn't that the only reason they find writing hard: they don't know or care about anything?

Don't worry whether or not I am now happy. Today is only chapter one, we have yet to write a book.

Don't write about what you know - write about what you're interested in. Don't write about yourself - you aren't as interesting as you think.

Don't write to sell, write to tell.

Do people who believe in reincarnation ever say, Darn, I'm still writing the year 1612 on my checks!

Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense.

Don't write about what you don't know even if you don't know it.

Don't write slogans, write truths.

Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case.

Don't write what you know. Write what you love. That's what will keep you writing.

Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.

Don't write down to your readers. The ones dumber than you can't read.

Don't write poems to make girls like you, because it will not make them like you but it will give them something to quote back at you later in life.

Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.

Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

Don't write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn't be changed.

Don't write love poems when you're in love. Write them when you're not in love.