Writing Should be a Choice, Not Compulsion

     It is said that those who long to be a writer are infatuated, besotted, smitten with words and what they might create. Lorrie Moore famously said, "First try to be something, anything else. You should become a writer if you have no choice. Writing has to be an obsession--it's only for those who say, 'I'm not going to do anything else.'"

     I think that's nonsense…Writing is a choice of a way of spending a working life that lets you off the hook if you decide you don't like it or haven't the talent in the use of words. But if you take to it, the writing life can be rewarding even if you're struggling with perfecting a potentially important or useful work of nonfiction or, heaven forbid, a novel. [Novels written by writers who say "they love words" usually stink. Readers love good stories, not words.]

Sol Stein, Sol Stein's Reference Book for Writers, 2010 

The Bad Review

I quit writing after Publishers Weekly told me my first novel was "just terrible." Something broke, you see. I was 29 and I'd worked for ten years at that novel, and I didn't see the point of spending another ten years only to be told the same thing again. So I tend bar here in North Plainfield, New Jersey, and try to encourage the other writers who come by now and then. We don't get many writers in North Plainfield.

Luke Walton in Rotten Reviews and Rejections, edited by Bill Henderson and Andre Bernards, 1998

On Being a Screenwriter

     Screenwriting is a brutal, ridiculous calling. Sure, if you want to become a lawyer or a doctor, it's hard. It's a ton of work, but it can be done and once you've graduated from med school or law school and passed all of your exams, there are jobs out there…And there are people who need your services.

     But screenwriting is different. There are hardly any openings for gainful employment, and if there are a few jobs, you must compete for them with established Academy Award-nominated writers…

     "Being a writer is hard, being a professional writer is even harder, and being a working Hollywood screenwriter may be the hardest of all.

Richard Krevolin, Screenwriting in the Land of Oz, 2011

Violent Schizophrenics

     Nearly 1 percent of people will be diagnosed with schizophrenia in their lives...The disorder has a strong genetic component, scientists estimate almost half of the risk comes from genetic factors. Men are diagnosed more than women, and in the United States, black people more often than those of other races, though researchers are not sure why.

     Some drugs help control its symptoms, but schizophrenia has no cure. Most of its sufferers do not work, marry, or have families. [Many are homeless.] They die on average about fifteen years younger than other Americans.

     People with schizophrenia are also more likely to commit violent crime. Mental illness groups play down that grim reality.

Alex Berenson, Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, And Violence, 2019

Sherlock Holmes on Recognizing Danger

I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to understand that I am by no means a nervous man. At the same time, it is stupidity rather than courage not to recognize danger when it is close upon you.

Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem." 1893

A Novel's Setting

Setting not only promotes the reader's understanding of what kind of novel he's reading, it also establishes a feeling that the reader takes into the experience. Setting triggers mood as well. And since one of the objectives of the writer is to stimulate emotional response on the part of the reader, setting is yet another tool that can be used to do this.

Elizabeth George, Write Away, 2004 

How to Deal With a Bad Review

My favorite Kirkus review labeled my writing as "awkward and repetitious." I framed that one.

Charles Knief, mysterylinkonline.com, August 29, 2001 

Genre Is For Critics and Booksellers, Not Writers

     There is a tendency to categorize writers of fiction as either literary or commercial. The implication is that either a writer chooses to write for the masses or the discerning few, for money or critical acclaim, for the here and now or the ages. There isn't always a clear delineation between the one and the other, and sometimes a book will achieve recognition both as commercial and literary fiction, but mostly not. Basically, this is how fiction writers are grouped.

     But I don't believe writers choose their material based on how they think it is going to be received. I don't even believe that they make a conscious decision to write in a certain fashion. Rather, I think that writers just try to do the best they can with what skills they possess. I think they are imbued with a desire to write about certain subjects, and mostly that is what they do. It isn't a matter of sitting down and saying, "Okay, I think I'll write the next Stephen King thriller and get on all the best-seller lists and make millions." Writing requires passion and commitment in order to come alive. Writers write about what intrigues and compels them, what speaks to them in the same way it will speak to their readers once they find the right way to set it all down.

Terry Brooks, Sometimes the Magic Works, 2005

Sword-and-Socery Fiction

Sword-and-socery fiction is to fantasy what the western is to the historical novel, or perhaps more precisely, what the hardboiled private-eye story is to mystery fiction. It is a sub-genre based on a prefabricated image, without which it cannot be identified at all: the cowboy in the middle of the dusty street, ready to draw; the private-eye in the trench coat; the brawny scantily-clad swordsman, glaring defiantly at menaces supernatural and otherwise, with an even less-clad shapely wench cowering somewhere in the background.

Darrell Schweitzer in How To Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by J.N. Williamson, 1991 

How to Start a Story

Unlike bombastic journalism that relies on opening with a bang, a novel can open less loudly. Here's an example of a bang opening by Truman Capote in "Children on Their Birthdays": "Yesterday afternoon the six o'clock bus ran over Miss Bobbitt." Yes, this catches our interest, but what next? It'll be hard to match the intensity of the beginning with what follows. The story starts with a climax rather than working toward one; instead of looking forward, we look backward, and the whole story might be an anticlimax.

Josip Novakovich, Fiction Writer's Workshop, 1995