Jane Haddam Quotes

I think it is probably more important to attend specialized conventions for a journeyman writer than any other, but it's useful at all stages of a career, if for nothing else, to find out how the industry is working at any given time.

I'm still startled when people ask me for writing advice.

When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.

I always send new writers to 'Writer's Digest Books' line-up of how-to books. I read them all when I was starting out, and they were very helpful.

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.

My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something totally different. Besides fiction, I write poetry, screenplays, essays and journalism. It's usually not the writing itself that I'm stuck on, but thing I'm trying to write. So I often have four or five things going at once.

I'm often asked how I write books, but I don't think my approach is suitable for everyone. If I walked into a creative writing class, all I could say to them was 'I tend to make it up as I go along.' I'm not sure that's brilliant advice.

I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.

It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it.

I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.

It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.

I like high school and college writing textbooks and find them very helpful. Whenever I'm stuck and seem to have no ideas, I open one up and turn to the back. There I'll find questions like, "Have you had any experiences with an alcoholic or a sailor?"

There is one person who can help solve 'writer's block'. His name is Mr. Johnnie Walker.

If you do enough planning before you start to write, there's no way you can have writer's block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline.

People always say, 'Write what you know', but I've always found that to be terrible advice. It's quite limiting, what you know.

Every writer uses his own way to motivate oneself.

I'm constantly battling writer's block; it usually takes me two hours to write anything.

I am dismayed to realize that much of the advice I used to parcel out to aspiring writers has passed its sell-by date.

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.

I can't write; I don't think I'm even particularly good at telling a writer what's good or what's missing. So, actually having someone who can do that is a godsend.

I'd been in journalism about two weeks when I realized I would do just about anything to avoid writing, and over the years, I have.

Ultimately I'm the writer for me, but also, anytime one of my friends gets stuck with a bit, they can call me, and I'm pretty good at helping them get there.

I'm afraid there are no magical tips. There is no secret. Writing is all about telling stories as well as you can.

It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, 'Read,' but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, 'Don't read, don't think, just write,' and the result could be a mountain of drivel.

Professionals don't get writer's block. I can always come up with the punch line.