Nahnatchka Khan Quotes

A baby writer should take inspiration from her predecessors but also find ways to tell her own stories in her own way.

Writing is not a competitive sport. Everyone that writes has his or her own voice.

I try not to have actors in mind when I write because the tendency then is to be influenced by either their last performance or your favourite of their performances.

I don't have a style. I just try to write what the story demands.

It is easy to club people together, but there are bound to be influences of authors you've read. I grew up reading fast paced authors such as Sidney Sheldon and Jeffrey Archer, but to say I'm one of them isn't true; my style is intrinsically my own.

All writers are mimics, and I'm not interested in picking up somebody else's style or voice.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'

I love to write. I used to be a math teacher. And I like the idea that other people could write about the same subjects, but no one would write it just the way I do. It's very individual: a child could write the same story as somebody else, but it wouldn't come out the same.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

There's a lot of writing in television that can sound like it's taken out of a package, and the way to get around that is to not allow yourself to deliver it that way.

I thought I was clever enough to write as well as these people and I didn't realize that there is something called originality and your own voice.

Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.

Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.

There are millions of people who think that romance isn't real writing. But the only person who can make you real, make your books real, is you.

Most fiction writers are driven to find their own 'voice,' but I am more interested in the voices of others.

I would like to be able to write in my own voice.

When we first started to write our first movie, 'You Are Going To Prison,' we wanted it to be crazy and unique, brand new, our voice, not like anything that'd ever been before. It took us about a year to write our first script.

I don't want my writing to be so unique that when you apply it to different genres, it seems like the previous show that people know you from.

I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

I prefer writing originals.

What I aspire to do, and what I try the hardest to do, is write stuff that's very personal in its way. I figure I can only say things the way I say them, so I'm trying to do something that is kind of anti-generic.

It's often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.