492Let'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.
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493When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are _not_ the story.
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494Gould said something else that was interesting on the day I turned in my first two pieces: Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and can get it right, as right as you can, anyway--it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. If you're very lucky...more will want to do the former than the latter.
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495Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.
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496Pow! Two unrelated ideas--adolescent cruelty and telekenesis, come together, and I had an idea. See also intimation KV.
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497The writer's original perception of a character may be as erroneous as the reader's.
Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
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498It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for at--it's the other way around.
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498It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for at--it's the other way around.
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499All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation.
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500King on telepathy
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501You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair--the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the art with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again. You must not come lightly to the empty page.
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502On tools and toolboxes--I want to suggest that you [should] construct your own toolbox and then build up the muscles to carry it with you.
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503Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules. Strunk.
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5042 Theses:
1. Good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocab, grammar, style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments.
2. While it is impossible to make a competent writer from a bad one, and it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it IS possible with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.
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505Some people never forget, and a good deal of literary criticism seems only to reinforce a caste system which is as old as the intellectual sobbery which nurtured it.
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506If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others--read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of--no shortcut.
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507I knew, not because Owen stopped practicing, but because he was practicing only during the periods Mr. Bone had set for him. Et seq.
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508The writer who is serious and committed is incapable of sizing up story material the way an investor might size up various stock offerings, picking out the ones which seem likely to provide a good return.
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509People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do.
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510I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story. Some of the ideas which have produced these books are more complex than others, but the majority start out with the stark simplicity of a department store window display or a waxwork tableau. Et seq.
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511Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot.
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512My take on all these things is pretty simple--It's all on the table, every bit of it, and you should use anything that improves the quality of your writing and doesn't get in the way of your story. Et seq.
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513But no matter how you do it, there comes a point when you must judge what you've written, and how well you wrote it. I don't believe a story or a novel should be allowed outside of the door of your study or writing-room unless you feel confident that it's reasonably reader-friendly.
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515At one moment I had more of this; at the next I had all of it. If there is anything I love about writing more than the rest, It's that sudden flash of insight when you see how everything connects. I have heard it called "Thinking above the curve" and it's that, I've heard it called "The over-logic" and it's that too. Et seq.
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514For weeks I got exactly nowhere in my thinking--it all just seemed too hard, to f complex. I had run out of too many plotlines, and they were in danger of becoming snarled. I circled the problem again and again, beat my fists on it, knocked my head against it,...and then one day, when I was thinking of nothing much at all, the answer came to me. It arrived gift-wrapped, you should say--in a single bright flash. I ran home and jotted it down on paper, the only time I've done such a thing, because I was terrified of forgetting it.
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516Kurt Vonnegut rewrote each page of his novels until he got them exactly the way he wanted them. The result was days when he might only manage a page or two of final copy, but when the manuscript was finished, the book was finished.
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517I'm often asked if I think the beginning writer of fiction can benefit from writing classes or seminars. The people who ask are, all-too-often, looking for a magic bullet, or a secret ingredient, or Dumbo's magic feature, none of which can be found in classrooms or at writing retreats, no matter how enticing the brochures may be.
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518In truth, I've found that any day's routine interruptions and distractions don't much hurt a work in progress and may actually help it in some ways. After all, it's the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not the pearl-making seminar with other oysters.
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519Other than "Where do you get your ideas" the questions any publishing writer hears most frequently from those who want to publish are "How do you get an agent" and "how do you make contact with people in the world of publishing?"
The tone in which these questions are asked is often bewilderment, and sometimes chagrined, and frequently angry. There is a commonly-held suspicion that most newcomers who actually succeed in getting their books published broke through because they had an in, a contact, a rabbi in the business. The underdogs assumption is that publishing is just one big, happy, incestuously closed family.
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519Writer's Market: Magazine
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520Perhaps I do know a lot, but some of it turned out to be dull and most of the rest, I've discovered, has more to do with instinct than with anything resembling "high thought." I found the act of articulating these instructive truths painfully difficult.
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521The scariest moment is always just before you start.
After that, things can only get better.
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