Quotes about Writing

One of my favorite writing quotes comes from E.L. Doctorow: "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." It sounds to me as if he was a pantser, writing from scene to scene. Of course, you still need to have a set of landmarks that you're looking for, whether you're going somewhere or writing a story that requires a plot structure. Still, to write this way requires a certain confidence that you'll end up where you want to.

Here are some other writing quotes that resonate with me. You can find all of these, and many more, listed on Goodreads.

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."--Maya Angelou

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."--Toni Morrison

"Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it."--Lloyd Alexander

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader."--Robert Frost

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." -- Ray Bradbury

I was tempted to list more, but I'll stop here. Which of these quotes appeal to you? Are there others you like? Feel free to share them in the comments.

IWSG: Inspiration or Perspiration?

Agatha Christie said about her career, "There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well."

One of the things that first attracted me to writing was reaching the flow state, where you know the material so well, where high demand meets high skill, that your words flow effortlessly. Most of my writing sessions, however, are not like that. I get distracted, I have to figure out what come next in the scene and if the scene is leading me toward the climax, and I tend to edit as I write. But eventually, if I keep writing, I move closer to the flow state.

Don't be afraid of the perspiration. It might lead you to the inspiration.

Five-Star Review of Lyon's Legacy

I submitted my SF novella Lyon's Legacy to Indie Book Blog and was very pleased to see their review go live today. (It's already up on Amazon and Goodreads; I think it might be in a few other places as well.) My story got five stars. Here are a couple of quotes:

"While being a relatively short read Lyon's Legacy was extremely entertaining."

"Well written characters drive the story and Joanna's turmoil over her choices is palpable. I'm not sure I have read anything quite like this, but I am eager to see more from the author."

"A very well done novella debut from Sandra Ulbrich Almazan brings another indie author to keep an eye on into the picture."

I'm glad you enjoyed the story! Thanks for the review!

So, What Is the Work of Writing?

Some of you may have already read this article in the Wall Street Journal by Harlan Coben about writing. In it, Coben lists the three steps to become a great writer: inspiration, perspiration, and desperation. (Since Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are," we've made some progress since his time.) The second step is the one I want to discuss, especially this part of the article:

The second is perspiration. You have to sit your butt in the chair and write. You have to do that every day. That doesn’t mean you lie on your couch and play with your navel. That doesn’t mean you go shopping when the words don’t flow the way you think they should. That never works. It means you sit your butt in the chair and get to work. No excuses. And just so we’re clear: Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing (yes, that’s deep). (emphasis mine)

While I agree with Coben that only writing puts words on the page, compared to outlining or creating characters, I think the planning stage deserves more credit than he gives it. I started out writing as a pantser. I still pants to some extent--I recently wrote a 15,000 word fantasy novella based on nothing more than a few ideas that came to me one morning--but I'm now outlining longer works and finding it helpful. For example, as part of preparing for National Novel Writing Month last year, I outlined the story ahead of time. With this map, I was able to crank out 50,000 words in a month because I knew where I was going. However, once I veered away from the outline, progress slowed dramatically. I'm now back to outlining what I have so far so I can figure out how to get to the end of the story without stalling on various boring bits. (I think the lack of planning led to the story morass I'm currently stuck in.) All of the pre-writing tasks Coben disparges support the words of the story like the framework of a building. I do feel that I've made progress on my story if I outline it or make mental notes about what I want to change in the next draft. I can also be a faster writer if it doesn't take me six drafts to figure out the plot.

It's interesting that Coben leaves revising out of this step. Sometimes there's more perspiration in this step than in the first draft. You may wind up with fewer words on the page, but hopefully they'll be sharper words.

Well, I have to get back to outlining and revising for now. So tell me: do you agree with Coben that only writing is writing, or do you think pre-writing counts too?

Back on the Blog Chain: The Speculative Mindset

I had my A-Z post for today prepared several weeks ago, and it doesn't fit well with the blog chain this time around. So today I have to double-post. Margie asked, "How do you get in the mindset of your genre? Do you research people or facts? Do you just reach into the recesses of your mind for events that would make a good story? Something else?”

Kat posted before me, and Kate comes afterward.

My genres of choice are science fiction and fantasy. Since both of them involve events that don't or can't happen in the world as we know it, it may seem difficult to get into the right mindset to write them. However, as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) knew, doing so requires practice:

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

(This quote is from Through the Looking Glass.)

I'm always on the lookout for interesting ideas or facts for my stories; they pop up when you least expect them. For example, I had to drive to St. Charles, IL on Monday for a CPR/First Aid class. While I was there, I noticed a house with three gargoyles on the roof. What were they doing there? Were they just guarding the house, or did they have another purpose? As if one house wasn't enough, on my way home, I noticed another house with three dog statues by the entrance. The two houses were in different cities, but what if they were next to each other? What if the two sets of statues were enemies? I may use this idea as the basis for a story someday, or maybe the statues will be part of a setting. Maybe I'll never use this idea. The point is no matter where you are, you can gather ideas from your surroundings if you look for unusual things and then allow yourself to speculate about them. I also like to look for ideas in science news or in other books.

In order to get into the speculative mindset -- or the mindset of any genre -- it's important to continually read in your genre and connect with others in your field. Doing so will show you what's already been done and what others are currently doing. Once you know where the genre has been, you can help decide where it needs to go next.

At the Intersection of Fantasy and Reality

Many of us, myself included, read and write stories for their escapist quality. When work is tedious and stressful, the kids are creating chaos and refusing to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, and the household chores never-ending, who wouldn't want to trade that all in for a couple of hours of excitement, romance, and fun? Unfortunately, the book eventually has to come to an end, and we're returned to our ordinary lives, which may seem even more mundane in comparison. Can fantasy (or fiction in general) help us make our personal lives more meaningful, or as Emily says in Our Town, "Do any human beings realize life while they live it--every, every minute?" I certainly don't; I'm neither a saint nor a poet. But as a scientist and fantasy/science fiction writer, experiencing a sense of wonder and sharing it with others is important to me. It's hard to make this happen when your To Do List is a mile long, but it's still important to stop from time to time and appreciate life.

Sometimes one can also find inspiration in fiction to become more heroic in one's daily life. For example, consider Katherine Blake's The Interior Life. The story starts with Susan, a stay-at-home housewife who has just sent her children off to school and has to clean the house. As she does dishes, she imagines a princess and her servant in a fantastic land and pictures the servant cleaning up the keep, just as Susan is doing in real life. As the princess embarks on a quest, Susan makes changes to improve her own life. It's been several years since I've read the story, even though I still have the book. But I remember enjoying how the parallel stories intertwined, and I enjoyed watching Susan change as much as I did the princess quest plot.

I'd love to discuss this topic further, but the title of this post gave me a story idea, and I should work on it before it slips away.

Quote of the Day

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."

T.S. Eliot.


P.S. I wonder what he meant by that--and I hope I never find out.

Quote of the Day

Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.

Horace Walpole

Quote of the Day

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Quote of the Day

"There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it."

 Bertrand Russell

Back on the Blog Chain: Remember Me

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing.--Benjamin Franklin


This week, Ten Word Tuesday has been preempted by the Blog Chain. Shannon has a tough question for us:

Imagine this: when you're gone, readers will remember your writing most for just one of these things: your characters, your plots, your settings, or your style. Which one (only one!) would you prefer over the rest? Why?

It isn't emotionally easy contemplating your death and what will be left of you afterward. However, I knew my answer to this question as soon as I read the choices. I admire authors who have poetic styles or who can create lush, detailed settings, but those aren't my strengths. Enthralling, unpredictable plots are great to read, and if I could choose two things, plots would be my second choice. But my first choice is characters. To me, bringing a complex character to life with just words, creating a "virtual" person who evokes intense emotions in my readers, who changes over the course of a story, and who may even feature in several plots is a great accomplishment. If I can manage that, then I feel I have written something worth reading indeed. I'm not the one who makes that call; it's up to my readers. As the Beatles said, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." I hope I can create characters people love--even if they love to hate them.

Please check out Amanda's and Eric's posts on this topic to continue following the chain.

Ten Word Tuesday: Quote of the Day (by Arthur C. Clarke)

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

Back on the Blog Chain: Genres

For this round of the Blog Chain, Margie wants to know How did you come to write your YA genre (e.g. contemp, fantasy, etc.)? AND (yep, it’s a 2 parter), if you weren’t writing that, what genre would you be interested in exploring?

As usual, Amanda comes before me in the chain and Eric afterward.

I'm in the minority in this group; I don't consider myself a YA writer. (But you still like me, right? Right?) For me, the speculative element of science fiction or fantasy is more important than the age of my main character or my readers. I've written both teenage and adult main characters. I like to plan not just trilogies, but sagas in which the characters I originally started with mature and have children/new main characters to continue the story; I'd like to do that with my current project. So although Across Two Universes could be YA, I think I'm better off marketing it as regular science fiction.

As to how I got into science fiction and fantasy, I started reading it when I was a girl. I went through periods where I explored other genres, but when a friend introduced me to the Star Trek novels, I gradually found my way back to SF/fantasy. At this point, it makes up the vast majority of my fiction reading. I'm a science geek, so that's part of the reason I read SF. I'm also a Midwesterner born and raised. I love the region, yet I must admit it's very mundane at times, especially in the middle of winter, when I'm surrounded by a barren landscape full of suburbs and strip malls and dead spaces between highways. Who wouldn't want something magical or alien to revive you with a sense of wonder?

Ironically, if I could no longer write SF or fantasy, my writing would probably be full of the mundane I try to escape. They say to write what you know, after all. It's hard to imagine writing something without a speculative element. I might wind up writing general fiction or women's fiction, drawing my themes from the challenges of middle age. As Ringo said in A Hard Day's Night, "Being middle-aged and old takes up most of your time, doesn't it?" But I'd still prefer to mix some magic into the mundane world of middle age. Why let teenagers have all the fun, after all? ;)

Quote of the Day

"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."

Mark Twain

Ten Word Tuesday: From James Norman Hall

Loafing is the most productive part of a writer's life.

Quotations: Creativity

While I was cleaning out my office earlier this week, I found a clipping with quotes on creativity. I'm not sure where I found it, but I know I've had it for years. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from it:

Very few people do anything creative after the age of 35. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of 35. -- Joel Hildebrand

Highly creative people are often off their rockers.--Stanley Hoffmann

Artists die twice. First creatively. Then physically. The second one is easier.--Sylvester Stallone

Quote of the Day

I just saw this quote in Olivia Judson's column in the New York Times. She's explaining why she's taking a break from writing:

Writing in this space is the most gratifying job I’ve ever had, but also the toughest. It’s like owning a pet dragon: I feel lucky to have it, but it needs to be fed high-quality meat at regular intervals . . . and if something goes wrong, there’s a substantial risk of being blasted by fire.

Quote of the Day

For all of you nervous about crit groups:

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger."

Franklin P. Jones


P.S. Don't overlook my previous post, in which I offer to answer your questions!

Quote of the Day

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it."

Tallulah Bankhead

The English Language

I can't resist passing this quote on to you. I think it explains a lot:


"The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary."


Dave Kellett