Bob Shacochis Quotes

I still don't know whether I know how to write a sentence.

To make anything successful, you need a good writer.

Writing is hard.

Writing is not an unknown territory for me.

Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.

One of the biggest problems for beginning writers is this need to over-explain.

A novelist can never be his own reader, except when he is ridding his manuscript of syntax errors, repetitions, or the occasional superfluous paragraph.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

I write my columns pretty carefully.

I have always found writing very difficult.

Even printed, on pages that are bound, sentences remain unsettled organisms. Years later, I can always reach out to smooth a stray hair. And yet, at a certain point, I must walk away, trusting them to do their work. I am left looking over my shoulder, wondering if I might have structured one more effectively.

Writing is boring, very boring, and it takes so much patience.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.

There's a great deal of stripping away; in early drafts, I may say the same thing two or three times, and each may be appropriate, but I try to pick the best and improve it. I work on sound a great deal, and I will change a word or two, revise punctuation and line breaks, looking for the sound I want.

When you are a writer, the assist-to-turnover ratio... there are a lot more turnovers than assists.

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

If people want to be better writers, they can't just read the blogs! You've got to look at something that's outside this rushing world of evanescent words.

I'm very involved in the writing on every level.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

Each piece I tell stands on its own, and then it all ties together. It segues from story to story, and then I wrap it up - like three-piece movements in a symphony.

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

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.

I can draw pencil lines to show something is moving, but if I'm writing, I struggle with how to write it. The boy ran down the hallway? The boy ran quickly down the hallway? The boy ran down the marble hallway? I agonize over the words. So my editor works very hard. I'm lucky to have her.

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

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.