Jill McCorkle Quotes

Writing tips are like mini skirts. Sometimes they fit perfectly, sometimes they make you cry, and sometimes you can reuse the material and sew yourself a pillow or something.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.

Now the writing in the head, I definitely do every day, thinking about how I want to phrase something or how I'd like to rephrase something I've already written.

I think the best advice I give is to try not to write. Try not to overwrite, try not to make it sound too good. Just use your own voice. Use your own style of putting it down.

I've always found the Write-What-You-Know axiom small and stifling.

I'm not a writer who refuses to talk about a book until I've finished.

I want to wake up one morning and know how to write page one, or page 10, or page 250. But I never seem to know how to do it. Every book is different and takes a different structure, style, process, etc. And relearning how to write is where the insanity comes from.

I get so used to working with writers that my prime occupation is development.

If you want to be a writer, don't worry so much about writing. Read as much as you can. Read as many different writers as you can. Soak up the styles.

Read good books. Read bad books - and figure out why you don't like them. Then don't do it when you write. If you are a science fiction or fantasy writer, going to conventions and attending panels is very useful.

Stephen King's 'On Writing' is probably the most useful writing book I've ever read.

You become a great writer by writing.

I'm always telling my students, don't - don't worry so much third person, first person. It doesn't make that much difference.

I love the writing. I love the idea of typing and seeing it on the computer and printing it out myself and, you know, moving sentences around. I like that.

Try writing a book, dude. That's difficult.

Writing is hard. I mean, I sit there and work at it.

Writing is not an unknown territory for me.

The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.

I wrote a piece for the school literary magazine that now makes me think: 'My God in Heaven, this is just the worst drivel.'

I write novels and other things.

All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a computer.

I can't change overnight into a serious literary author. You can't compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.

There are times over different projects when I've asked the writers why people are swearing for no good reason. I tell them that it would be funnier if there weren't these swear words.