Writing advice

“It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”

—Jack Kerouac,

“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.”

—Hunter S. Thompson

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

—Stephen King

"...to gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard."

—Allen Ginsberg

"Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

—George Orwell

“For your born writers, nothing is so healing as the realization that they have come upon the right word.”

—Catherine Drinker Bowen

“We’re past the age of heroes and hero kings. … Most of our lives are basically mundane and dull, and it’s up to the writer to find ways to make them interesting.”

—John Updike

"I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it."

—Ernest Hemingway

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”

—Elmore Leonard

“Style means the right word. The rest matters little.”

—Jules Renard

“Style means to forget all style.”

—Jules Renard

“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at 15 to write several novels.” —May Sarton

"I think all writing is a disease. You can’t stop it.” —William Carlos Williams

“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes." —Andre Gide

“Beware of advice... even this.”

—Carl Sandberg