Maury Yeston Quotes

My most profound growth as a writer came when I joined an online critique group. What a harrowing, terrifying, wonderful experience that was.

The knowledge and insights you can get in just one day at a writers' conference make it worth the trip.

I am trying to keep growing and improving as a writer.

If you write enough, you begin to learn to do things. But in a way, you do start from zero each time.

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

I believe I'm a better writer now than I was when I started. I'm grateful that I had good guidance because you don't make it in this business without good editors and a lot of support from your publishers.

Smart authors, faced with storms, chose to create umbrellas. That's why a diverse group of authors banded together to create The Fiction Writer's Co-op, which will work to find innovative ways to promote each other's work and cheer each other on in a very competitive field.

The writing workshops and programs that are everywhere have encouraged writing. And if that produces more writing, it's also producing more readers of an elevated level. So all in all, a good thing.

But, if there's any aspect of my career that needs attention, it's writing.

I think what I like best is that when people give talks or workshops, it doesn't really matter what level you are as a writer - whether you are a beginner, or you've been around the block a bit; there's something that you can take away from every session.

I'm always working with amazing people. They're just kind of put in my path.

One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.

I began to imitate what I was reading, and I started to become a poet, even though what I was writing were not good poems.

I like helping other writers who don't know what to do or where to go in New York.

Publishing your work is important. Even if you are giving a piece to some smaller publication for free, you will learn something about your writing. The editor will say something, friends will mention it. You will learn.

I think that, in principle, a workshop is such a beautiful idea - an environment in which writers who are collectively apprenticed to the craft of writing can come together in order to collectively improve.

No writing effort is ever wasted. At the very least, it's practice, and a writer never knows when he or she might usefully cannibalize an earlier effort for something new.

I personally feel I still have so much to learn as a writer; each novel is better than the one before, just because I'm getting better at it.

That is the godawful thing about television today. Performers don't have any place to hit and miss. You're either in or you're out; you don't have a chance to become good at your craft. If you make three pictures in a row and they don't go over, you're out of the business.

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 wanted to get better at writing, so I knew I needed to move to Nashville.

My vision is that everyone who has ever won an #SBS retweet from me becomes part of a friendly club. Like-minded individuals can share successes and learn.

I hadn't meant to do the pattern of publishing short stories and then a novel. I thought, 'I'm a novelist. I know it.' But you have to kind of write a lot of bad novels before you can write a good one, I think, so I did that. But meanwhile, I loved the short stories I did.

I am writing things on my own, but I really believe co-writing makes you a better writer.

To develop your own voice, you have to keep writing a ton, and this is something where I think Twitter is helpful. I use it to write a ton of jokes. You have to write a ton of bad stuff before you know what you're good at. And that's what some people I think have trouble with, the thought of getting past the bad stuff.