John Dufresne Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Done, Ass

  John Dufresne (2010). “Is Life Like This?: A Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months”, p.15, W. W. Norton & Company

• Love is anticipation and memory, uncertainty and longing. It’s unreasonable, of course. Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope and pleasure as love, except maybe writing a story. And nothing fails as often, except writing stories. And like a story, love must be troubled to be interesting.

  John Dufresne

  Memories, Writing, Love Is

  John Dufresne (2008). “Love Warps the Mind a Little: A Novel”, p.140, W. W. Norton & Company

• You will feel discouraged; you will lose confidence in your abilities; you will be bored with the characters–and the only way to overcome these obstacles is to write your way through them. And writing always works.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Character, Bored

• I write with a fountain pen. And then revise word by word and line by line so that the first draft of a scene is usually the tenth or so draft.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Lines, Firsts

  Source: therumpus.net

• Actually, my first literary heroes were the Romantic poets, so I began to get serious by writing poems. I have notebooks full of them that I cherish but am afraid to look at.

  John Dufresne

  Notebook, Hero, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

• I was always writing. I just didn't know if I was any good.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Knows, Ifs

  Source: therumpus.net

• What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.

  John Dufresne

  Teaching, Writing, Fighting

  Source: therumpus.net

• Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how important this work we're doing is.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Important, Stories

  Source: therumpus.net

• Place is character. And all writing is regional.

  John Dufresne

  Writing, Character

  Source: therumpus.net

• It's easier to write about a place sometimes when you've left it, when you can apply your imagination to your memory and let your emotions guide the writing about a place.

  John Dufresne

  Memories, Writing, Imagination

  Source: therumpus.net

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