Megan McCafferty Quotes

If you want to be a writer, you have to learn to write in other people's voices until you get the chance to write in your own.

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

The training of a journalist, of working with words for thousands of hours, is extraordinarily useful for a fiction writer.

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

Writing a novel - unlike operating a piece of heavy machinery, say, or cooking a chicken - is not a skill that can be taught. There is no standard way of doing it, just as there is no means of telling, while you're doing it, whether you're doing it well or badly. And merely because you've done it well once doesn't mean you can do it well again.

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.

I tell the stories that are of interest to me.

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there.

Some writers would be kinder than others, I'm sure. Hopefully they might describe my techniques as a mixture of tried and tested formulas - if it aint broke don't fix it - and unexpected twists.

Struggling writers are often advised to pick a simple genre, but it doesn't work that way.

I'm not sure there are too many people who write what I write.

I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

It took me six novels before I felt confident of my voice as a writer.

When I'm writing, I don't really have much other guide than, 'As a reader, how would I respond to this?'

Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.

When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'

I can't write unless I've got the voice for a character.

I think all writers have a style, a particular voice and rhythm that you have to find.

I think writing well takes a little bit of talent and an awful lot of work.

I've written short stories from male perspectives before, and I've never had a problem with it as long as I've understood the character's emotions and motivations.

I discovered that writing was very nice indeed when I was very young, and I never changed. I don't think my style has changed very much at all - though I hope what I say is a bit more interesting. It's about getting to know a character and loving them, I think.

I think all writing is done through memory.

In my early writing, all of my characters were exactly the same person. They all spoke the same, made the same types of jokes, reacted the same, etc. I think they were all just me in disguise.

Favorite subject? I would have to say creative writing.