Ethan Canin Quotes

I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me.

I'm very bad at ending sentences. A lot times I just want to say, 'That's the end of my sentence. I have nothing more to say.'

Trying to get the sentences right and the structure of the narration right is about as big a job as I can handle. But I also know that if you handle that job properly, everything else just clicks into place.

I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.

To write you have to be able to know how to put words together.

I don't like writing - it's so difficult to say what you mean. It's much easier to edit other people's writing and help them say what they mean.

I am gennerally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

I have always found writing very difficult.

You just can't make bad writing look good. But if you have good writing, you just say it, and it's almost done.

Respect the language in which you write. Be kind, develop good vocabulary, and be creative in writing beautiful sentences. Your prose should be your poetry when you write.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.

I can't write - I don't even know how to punctuate.

I leave my editor to put the periods and commas in.

Names and other proper nouns shouldn't distract from the language.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

I'd rather fiddle with my phone for precious seconds than neglect an apostrophe; I'd rather insert a word laboriously keyed out than resort to predictive texting for a - acceptable to some - synonym.

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

Writing is hard.

Writing is not an unknown territory for me.

Editing is more by-the-hip. You look at a text and ask yourself how it can be improved.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.