There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

The two most engaging powers of a good author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.

Write what you want to read. The person you know best in this world is you. Listen to yourself. If you are excited by what you are writing, you have a much better chance of putting that excitement over to a reader.

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.

The best stories start with change… A stranger arrives in town… The first leaves of autumn fall… Notice in your reading of popular novels how often the moment of change is the moment the book begins… Think deeply about how to open your story with this crucial time of threatening change.

First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it… The first draft of a book is the most uncertain - where you need the guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

“Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly. There will be many mistakes, many things to take out and others that need to be added. You just aren’t always going to make the right decision.”

Taken from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life [1994]

“Good work doesn’t happen with inspiration. It comes with constant, often tedious and deliberate effort. If your vision of a writer involves sitting in a café, sipping an aperitif with one’s fellow geniuses, become a drunk. It’s easier and far less exhausting.”

“I learned… that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”

“The search for a story is a matter of slowly, calmly, carefully, tentatively coaxing a hidden set of somethings into visibility. Those somethings may be characters, places, situations, scenes, hopes, fears - the unseen possibilities of drama that are lurking in what we know.”