Every Sunday until November and unless I have a guest, I will share words of wisdom from writers on writing. Enjoy!

Some books are like fireworks. They blaze quickly, splendidly, and everyone cries “oooh!” and “aaaah!” But then they vanish, forgotten — at least until the next flurry of fireworks from the next bestseller.

Other books are like a warm fire. They aren’t dramatic; they don’t make one jump and shout. But they are the sort of books one can come back to again and again, and enjoy 10, 20, 30, or 50 years after you first read them. They are the sort of books that a reader can enjoy for the FIRST time, decades after they were first written.

(…)

Books that endure are, I suspect, most often books of the heart. They are the books that the author WANTED to write — without caring whether they became bestsellers or not.

– Moira Allen

“If you’re writing a spec and you’re not having fun, something’s wrong. I used to have lots of fun. Now, I’m always thinking, will it sell, will it sell?” — Shane Black

I found this quote online and it got me thinking. There was no date attributed, but I can’t imagine it’s recent. Does Shane Black still play the spec game? Does he still really give a crudbucket if his spec sells? Well, maybe he does.

After all, when you’ve racked up historic sales like he has, there’s probably a certain amount of pressure to keep it going. Me? Eh. I couldn’t give a rodent’s derriere.

What I mean is, I’m a bit more realistic nowadays. When you’re in your 40s, and you’ve been at this a while, you start to gain what some people might call “a cynical freaking attitude,” but I call it “perspective.”

– Jim Cirile of Coverage Ink

If you want an agent to read the middle chapters of the book because “that’s where things get exciting,” you should probably consider editing the entire book to make it all exciting.

– Agent Jessica Faust of BookEnds

Every writer is different. Every writer’s method is different.

There is no correct, mandated way to write a book. Juts your way.

The myth of writing slow to write better actually hurts writers.

– Dean Wesley Smith

Every author knows the secret to writing books. It’s not closely guarded, probably because it is so dang hard to do sometimes—okay, often. Ready? Here it is: Sit down and work until you have some word count, aka Butt in the Chair. The craft and story will come over time, but not if you don’t do the first step. Sit and stay and write.

– Erin Kellison

Every Sunday until November and unless I have a guest, I will share words of wisdom from writers on writing. Enjoy!

You can’t wait for someon to come in and save you. Get out there with whatever means are at your disposal.

– Allegra Huston (daughter of John and sister of Anjelica) after crowd-funding her short “Good Luck, Mr Gorski”

The path to success is a path, not a destination. Making yourself happy, sharing your art, or whatever your goals are, requires constant adjustment along this changing path. We will all be making decisions in our writing careers. I challenge you not to see those decisions as right or wrong, but as just another span in an ever-flowing path that is your writing career. It will ebb and flow but it will never freeze unless you let it.

– Posted by Domey Malasar, author/blogger

Beautiful stories are emerging. A few days ago I read about a woman publishing her first e-book on her 72nd birthday. The vision-impaired have returned to reading because they can now adjust the font size. Families are sharing Kindles and a love of stories together. It’s an evolution, a revolution, and the greatest moment in human communication since Gutenberg. We are connected here in this common dream. There’s no expiration date on magic.

–Scott Nicholson

Never use someone else’s process word for word. It’s your process; it’s what’s in you! “Follow this guy’s process and use this colored paper” – never do that! Never take advice that sounds like instructions. If youw ant to do that, buy a coloring book. Be your own creative.

– Max Landis (filmmaker son of John Landis)

No matter what you do as an indie publisher, you must be writing first. You must be creating product.

In the first golden age of fiction, the pulp writers got very, very rich at 1 cent per word in the middle of the Depression.

We are in a new golden age of publishing.

We can write a few books, treat them like events and spoiling fruit, or we can write all the time, have fun, write what we want, put them up, and then just keep writing.

We now have the choice to go either to traditional publishing or do it ourself with indie publishing.

But just as it has been for hundreds of years, the writers who will make it on either side, traditional or indie, are the writers who just keep writing.

And that really is the secret.

– Dean Wesley Smith

Every Sunday until November and unless I have a guest, I will share words of wisdom from writers on writing. Enjoy!

There are so many writers now defending the Big 6 hat I liken their behavior to Stockholm Syndrome. As artists, we’ve become so used to the idea of breaking into the publishing industry by appeasing the gatekeepers that we’ve begun to revere them. We defend their decisions – even the wrong ones- because we’ve deemed them essential to the process. They’re the powerful pourveyors of wisdom who nod at worthy intellectual properties and welcome their creators into the fold.

– Joe Konrath

As an indie publisher, you can use your own publication deadlines to help drive yourself to finishing and releasing books.

Many beginning writers can’t seem to finish a project, or when they finish it they spend years rewriting the poor thing to death and having workshops turn it into a monster with an arm sewn onto the forehead.

Having a publication deadline will do wonders for getting you to write, finish what you write, not rewrite, and get it out to readers. (Wait, those sound like Heinlein’s Rules, don’t they? (grin))

Also knowing a book has a hope of getting read by readers and making you some money does wonders for pushing a writer to write and finish.

– Dean Wesley Smith

I still have great respect for those writers, like Raymond Carver, who pack as much tension into a suburban living room as other writers do with a planet overrun by zombies.

I can’t do that. More to the point, I don’t want to.

Never be ashamed of your enthusiasms. If you love something, write it even if nobody else does. And if nobody else does, write it so well that they have no choice but to love it too.

— Christopher Farnsworth

Don’t make it your job, make it your hobby. If you don’t enjoy writing, you shouldn’t be doing it. If you do enjoy it, do it more. Don’t treat it like it’s a job. Rewriting someone else’s work, that’s a job! Your original stuff should be fun.

– Max Landis (filmmaker son of John Landis)

Barb sez: and that’s why I gave up screenwriting! I didn’t want to end up rewriting somebody else’s stories! 😉

Think of the best stories you’ve ever read. How many of them are standard, run-of-the-mill stuff? I would be willing to bet the stories that stick in your mind have a fresh, a different perspective. And that can only happen when the author is true to himself or herself.

So my advice is to write first, then find a market for what you write. Remain true to your inner voice, and you will be published, and you will write lasting work.

– David Kubicek

Every Sunday until November and unless I have a guest, I will share words of wisdom from writers on writing. Enjoy!

If you plan to write for profit, please understand that it is a long, congested road. I self-publish my books only in electronic format. This market has few barriers to entry, which both helps and hurts. I have invested in a professionally designed website and book covers. The burden of publicizing the book falls solely on my wife and me. The internet is crowded, and that crowd generates a lot of noise, which hides the book of an unknown author. Breaking through the background noise is difficult and at times feels like an impossibility no matter how good your book may be. That’s what I think new writers should know.

– Joseph M.Rinaldo, indie author

Most writers are so stupid about the business they think they sell stories (We don’t, we license copyright).

– Dean Wesley Smith

But aside from all that buzz about influencers and reputational analysis, let’s not gorget that whole social is social thing. And the thing about being social is that it’s fun!

Sure, you may be an introvert like, me, but you can pick and choose your experiences. You can make reach out to people, and soon enough those virtual friends may become your real friends. This is increasingly how we connect with like-minded people, and the best part is that it works.

It’s really fun to do, and you can make the experience whatever you want. If you like Twitter, do that. If you like blogging, do that. If you’re a Facebook maven, go for it. There’s no right or wrong way to go about it and you can invent your own way if it didn’t exist.

– Nathan Bransford

For hundreds of years, writers couldn’t reach readers without publishers. We needed them. Now, suddenly, we don’t. But publishers don’t seem to be taking this Very Important Fact into account.

– Joe Konrath

Art, whether it is visual or literary or musical or whatever, is a living thing that thrives on experimentation and exploration. The digital age is offering all of us the most mind-blowing scope for experiment and exploring. You could do anything. ANYTHING. The possibilities are beyond anything we have so far encountered.

All you need is imagination and a bit of daring to take that step forward and just try.

– Vivienne Tuffnell – author and blogger