Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.
Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.
In a good play, everyone is in the right.
It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.
Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.
If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.
Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.
Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.
If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.
Fantasy doesn't have to be fantastic. American writers in particular find this much harder to grasp. You need to have your feet on the ground as much as your head in the clouds. The cute dragon that sits on your shoulder also craps all down your back, but this makes it more interesting because it gives it an added dimension.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.
Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
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