To say that creative writing courses are all useless is almost as silly as saying all editors are useless. Writers of all levels can benefit from other instructive voices.
Steve Martin is one of my favorite performers, writers, artists of all time.
I can remember in my early days of writing going to sort of writers' functions and parties and things like that, and I used to get very irritated because when people heard that you came from the suburbs, they had this notion that it was very un-cool to come from there.
I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect.
Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it but, if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.
Science fiction writers aren't short of ideas. You can read a book, and it sets off a chain of thought processes, so it becomes a response to other people's books.
Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.
Let me tell you, if I could write one-tenth as fast as some of my friends, I'd be made. I'd be it. But instead I happen to be, in the tree of life of writers, down at the bottom, with the hematodes.
At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.
The greatest writers have been, at heart, parochial, provincial in their rootedness.
At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.
I'm intrigued by films that have a singular vision behind them. A lot of studio movies have ten writers by the time they're done. You have a movie testing 200 times, making adjustments according to various people's opinions. It's difficult to have an undistilled vision.
The thing about American writers is that, as a group, they get stuck in the same idea: that we're a continent and the world falls away after us. And it's just nonsense.
Mostly, I would like people to ask other writers about the craft of their writing so we could learn from one another. We ask movie directors why they chose to use certain lights and angles and speeds of film, but most of the time, we ignore the craft of a writer.
Many children's writers don't have children of their own.
My first thought when I came here was that I understood why there are so many great Irish writers - because there is something mystical in the air. There's always this cloudy, moody sky and it's challenging.
Living in New York City is one constant, ongoing literary pilgrimage. For 20 years, I lived among the ghosts of great writers and walked where they had walked.
It's not easy to tell a story about writers and make that feel like a complete story and an interesting story.
Few writers can rival Helen Fielding when it comes to fully capturing the modern woman.
Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.
There's something about the alchemy of the show - the actors, the writers, the directors, the editors - that makes 'Parenthood' unique. You get so deeply embedded with these characters because you go through life with them, and that's our priority.
Most fledgling and mid-list writers are lucky to be offered a 4-figure sum and are not only expected to deliver copy that needs minimal editing but also take an active part in marketing and publicizing their work.
I started in this racket in the early '70s, and when I was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, of which I was like the sixth president, I was the first one nobody ever heard of.
Be aware of who in your life is actually interested in hearing you discuss your writing, and who's just asking to be polite. Listening to writers talk about their work is often excruciatingly dull.
I would like to champion diverse forms like graphic novels and works told in verse and diverse writers and illustrators and diverse authors as well.
And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.
The fact is, unlike a lot of writers, I credit the people who help me. A lot of writers out there have a ton of researchers and they don't get credited in the book.
Writers like to feel sorry for themselves, which is easy to do in private, but when called on to feel sorry for ourselves in social situations, we will often do so by sharing terrible book tour stories.
My first seven novels were contemporary spiritual novels, my next nine had strong elements of fantasy, and now I'm writing thrillers, more as a choice to spread my wings than anything. Writers, like good wine, should mature with age.
There is a whole generation of romance readers and writers who suffer from what I like to think of as 'Thorn Birds' Fever.
I've probably had my day in the sun. I think I've influenced a lot of comic book writers.
I find the middle classes kind of boring. The middle class has kind of been beaten like a dead horse by fictional writers. It's old news, and literature is supposed to bring new news, and for me, I feel I have to go as far out as I can to try and tell the kind of stories I want to tell.
Of course, the way writers think about those things is almost certain to be affected by their own cultural background, and it would be hard to deny that, for whatever reasons, a lot of SF writers come from Anglo or European backgrounds.
Unfortunately writers take a very small part of the profit on their books, and I think in the e-book world there is a real danger they will take even less, unless they are vigilant and robust about protecting their own interests.
I'm most impressed by the Russian writers, so I love reading the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Another author who has informed the way I think is the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal.
Less really is more. It's a tendency of beginning writers to want to prove what they're talking about by going too far with description. I think you've got to keep it short, crisp and clean.
