Writing Fluency Quotes

The most important thing for a writer to do is to write. It really doesn't matter what you write as long as you are able to write fluidly, very quickly, very effortlessly. It needs to become not second nature but really first nature to you. And read; you need to read and you need to read excellent books and then some bad books. Not as many bad books, but some bad books, so that you can see what both look like and why both are what they are.

By writing quickly we are not brought to write well, but by writing well we are brought to write quickly.

Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.

I think what's really hard is making sense and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing.

Because, if one is writing novels today, concentrating on the beauty of the prose is right up there with concentrating on your semi-colons, for wasted effort.

As a rule, one must write a great many words before one learns to write well.

If something is well-written, it has a chance to be good and if it's not well-written, it will not be good. It could even become popular, but it won't be good.

From writing rapidly it does not result that one writes well, but from writing well it results that one writes rapidly.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

I don't know what makes a writer's voice. It's dozens of things. There are people who write who don't have it. They're tone-deaf, even though they're very fluent. It's an ability, like anything else, being a doctor or a veterinarian, or a musician.

That's something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals.

I'm a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

My seventeen years of teaching inform my sense of audience in every line I write.

It's just as well that I write in the same facile way wherever I am - no blocks or anguish, no contemplation, no elaborate revision, no need for love-tokens or nice views.

When I was younger, the main struggle was to be a 'good writer.' Now I more or less take my writing abilities for granted, although this doesn't mean I always write well.

The only thing I can say that is not bullshit is that you do have to learn to write in a way that you would learn to play the violin. Everybody seems to think that you should be able to turn on the faucet one day and out will come the novel. I think for most people it's just practice, practice, practice, that sense of just learning your instrument until - when you have an idea on the violin, you don't have to translate it into violin-speak anymore - the language is your own. It's not something you can think your way into, or outsmart. you've just got to do it.

How can you contrive to write so even?

Part of being a writer is just getting it in your bones, getting the muscle memory down, just doing it.

It just happens I write fast and always have done.

It's very hard to articulate the things that are important about writing.

There are people who believe in an absolutely transparent prose; with every respect for clarity of expression, I don't.

I don't think anything I've written has been done in under six or eight drafts. Usually it takes me a few years to write a book. 'World's Fair' was an exception. It seemed to be a particularly fluent book as it came. I did it in seven months. I think what happened in that case is that God gave me a bonus book.

When you have good writing, the rhythm of the scene is very apparent. What the scene demands is very clear.

I have always been able to write on the spot. It is a talent that I guess comes naturally.