Writing Improvement Quotes

I'm a very slow screenwriter. It takes time for me to write a screenplay. Also, I feel it's not my strength.

It is a grand thing to get advice and criticism of people who really want to make more useful such things as any of us poor scribes write for the general public. There is just one bit of cheer, however, no matter how much we improve, everyone will never be pleased and therefore we may hope that everyone will never be displeased either.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing.

I don't think I'm a particularly good writer, and I'm not terribly insightful.

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Nothing improves your writing, I think, as much as your keeping writing.

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

I wrote a piece for the school literary magazine that now makes me think: 'My God in Heaven, this is just the worst drivel.'

Of course, there are those critics - New York critics as a rule - who say, 'Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it's good but then she's a natural writer.' Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

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

Nobody tells young writers it's okay if you're not very good, you'll get better. So I just thought I'm not very good, so I should try to do every other thing besides writing. That's how I ended up being a hitchhiker, a world traveler, and a mathematician.

Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.

I started typing diary in, I don't know, 1978 or '79, but then the computer changed that a lot. Because with the computer if you were writing and you realized you had three sentences in a row that started with the word "he," you could fix that right up, whereas on a typewriter you'd think, "Well, I'm not going to change the whole page. It's my diary." So that made a difference.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

Read the kinds of things you want to write; read the kinds of things you would never write. Learn something from every writer you read.

I, personally, have found reading a continual support to writing.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

I think back when I was kind of a crappy writer, I really did know my time was better spent working and having adventures and seeing the world.

Writing is like a sport. If you don't practice, you don't get any better.

Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

Before I studied story, I was trying to write a novel, and it was terrible. It wasn't going anywhere, and I couldn't figure out what I was trying to do. It was really hard; much harder than I thought it was going to be. Now that I've studied story, I think I'd have a different approach and maybe I could actually get it done.

The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me now.

With the first novel, I had to tell myself, 'No one is ever going to read it, so you might as well just write it.' With the second, I was pretty sure someone was going to read it.