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Writing quotes

JasonClearwater said:
He seems to have gone through phases. And then at some point, he absolutely let others publish under his name, and their writing was amateur as fuck.

One thing I've noticed - as writers achieve more fame, their editors seem to stop cutting their work, and it shows. You need to let your editors hack your work, no matter how much people love your work. They know what they're doing. Longer isn't better, if half of it's pointless drivel that you wrote to explain something to yourself.

So, I'd agree with you. But I also agree with this quote. At this point, in my own evolution. :p
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Best example of that was when King released the unedited version of the Stand. The first published version was in the 800 page range, the extended 'director's cut' was over 1100 I can tell you that whoever cut those 300 pages did their job because it was a bunch of rambling crap and excessive details the original read better without.

I recall in Cujo I think...the wife was having an affair and broke it off and the guy comes into the house when they're not home and it someone how turns into pages of his bitterness while he whacks off on her sheets.:confused:

Insomnia was the last book I read it was the cure for its title.

I think for me, he peaked at Pet Sematary.

As for fame making authors think they don't need an editor or just editors being afraid to edit them...FFS someone get Rice an editor. Better yet stop her from writing at all.:eek:
 
lovecraft68 said:
Best example of that was when King released the unedited version of the Stand. The first published version was in the 800 page range, the extended 'director's cut' was over 1100 I can tell you that whoever cut those 300 pages did their job because it was a bunch of rambling crap and excessive details the original read better without.

I recall in Cujo I think...the wife was having an affair and broke it off and the guy comes into the house when they're not home and it someone how turns into pages of his bitterness while he whacks off on her sheets.:confused:

Insomnia was the last book I read it was the cure for its title.

I think for me, he peaked at Pet Sematary.

As for fame making authors think they don't need an editor or just editors being afraid to edit them...FFS someone get Rice an editor. Better yet stop her from writing at all.:eek:
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Agreed. Pet Sematary was brilliant. We had a battered copy lying around (we had battered copies of everything lying around), when I was too young to be reading it, and fuck. Got into my head, that book.

The Stand was the first book of his I read where I thought... wtf? Why is all this bollocks in here? I think I skipped quite large chunks of it trying to find the Stephen King part.

This might be a contentious comment, but I feel the same about Tolkien. To me, he put all his backstory, which you should write for your own information, but which doesn't need to be in the book... in the book. I can't wade through it. I want things to happen.

I may be too Spartan on detail now to write good erotica, but my goal is always to write as little as needs to be written. The screenwriting rule - always come into the scene as late as possible.
 
JasonClearwater said:
Agreed. Pet Sematary was brilliant. We had a battered copy lying around (we had battered copies of everything lying around), when I was too young to be reading it, and fuck. Got into my head, that book.

The Stand was the first book of his I read where I thought... wtf? Why is all this bollocks in here? I think I skipped quite large chunks of it trying to find the Stephen King part.

This might be a contentious comment, but I feel the same about Tolkien. To me, he put all his backstory, which you should write for your own information, but which doesn't need to be in the book... in the book. I can't wade through it. I want things to happen.

I may be too Spartan on detail now to write good erotica, but my goal is always to write as little as needs to be written. The screenwriting rule - always come into the scene as late as possible.
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The movie of Pet Sematery is under rated and just like the book it was the Zelda story that scared the hell out of me...oh, that guy that played Zelda was creepy:eek:

I think my second -okay Salem's lot is second-so my third is one that doesn't get a lot of acclaim. I loved the Dark half.

I give Tolkien a pass only because if when he wrote. It seemed like it was all wordy back then. Books were a far bigger part of entertainment back then so maybe people thought the longer/denser the better?

Martin's Song of whatever he calls it....Theon's boat journey was two hundred pages and I think we met every nail in the boat. :rolleyes:

Works for some I guess. I tend to be self indulgent at times, but for me its not narrative or exposition, but I tend to get carried away in dialogue.

As my wife says I like to hear myself talk.:rolleyes:
 
lovecraft68 said:
The movie of Pet Sematery is under rated and just like the book it was the Zelda story that scared the hell out of me...oh, that guy that played Zelda was creepy:eek:

I think my second -okay Salem's lot is second-so my third is one that doesn't get a lot of acclaim. I loved the Dark half.

I give Tolkien a pass only because if when he wrote. It seemed like it was all wordy back then. Books were a far bigger part of entertainment back then so maybe people thought the longer/denser the better?

Martin's Song of whatever he calls it....Theon's boat journey was two hundred pages and I think we met every nail in the boat. :rolleyes:

Works for some I guess. I tend to be self indulgent at times, but for me its not narrative or exposition, but I tend to get carried away in dialogue.

As my wife says I like to hear myself talk.:rolleyes:
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Salem's Lot has always been my favorite Stephen King novel. It wasn't excessively wordy and it didn't suffer from the problem so many of his novels suffer from -- not knowing how to end it.

It's a great suspense novel. The sense of dread in the last third, as the vampires take over and night is drawing near and the few remaining people race time to find and defeat the vampire, is wonderfully drawn.
 
lovecraft68 said:
The movie of Pet Sematery is under rated and just like the book it was the Zelda story that scared the hell out of me...oh, that guy that played Zelda was creepy:eek:

I think my second -okay Salem's lot is second-so my third is one that doesn't get a lot of acclaim. I loved the Dark half.

I give Tolkien a pass only because if when he wrote. It seemed like it was all wordy back then. Books were a far bigger part of entertainment back then so maybe people thought the longer/denser the better?

Martin's Song of whatever he calls it....Theon's boat journey was two hundred pages and I think we met every nail in the boat. :rolleyes:

Works for some I guess. I tend to be self indulgent at times, but for me its not narrative or exposition, but I tend to get carried away in dialogue.

As my wife says I like to hear myself talk.:rolleyes:
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The Dark Half is another favourite of mine. I related to that very much growing up for... reasons. I'm sure it's contributed in part to me writing Schism, and other fiction along those lines, over the years.

I guess, like all of us, not everything we're going to produce will be to the same standard. But I remember when the idea of even bringing one book to the world was a big deal. Now it feels as though success is not just creating a book, but earning more off it than it cost you to produce, and then creating another ten.
 
SimonDoom said:
Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
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I think I resemble that one. Half of it anyway.

Sooooo... Any Louis L'amour fans out there?

start-writing-louis-lamour-quotes-sayings-pictures.jpg
 
I think this one personally fits me the best. My more serious writing is catharsis for a lot of....things.

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SimonDoom said:
It's a great suspense novel. The sense of dread in the last third, as the vampires take over and night is drawing near and the few remaining people race time to find and defeat the vampire, is wonderfully drawn.
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Being an avid King reader, I appreciate most of his stories, but I honestly have to say I like his non-horror stories best. Some of the things he published as Richard Bachman, like The Long Walk, are really nice to read. There were also a few that were so bad I couldn`t even get past the first 30 pages though.

I do agree that a good editor complements a good writer. An editor that does not tell the writer the truth only makes the writer worse. In above case, said editor should`ve told him that that particular story was not worth publishing. King actually said it himself somewhere that it was a really bad story.

As for an interesting quote (freely translated from a singer, as we all know literal translations don`t always work):

"It doesn`t matter if you`re original,
as long as it is better or more interesting."

At some point there is always someone else who has written something similar to you despite you both never having read something from each other. So I don`t let myself get discouraged by that idea and just try to be the best one of us two, just in case I actually get to read that other person`s story.
 
"I wish I could write like H.P. Lovecraft. That's not a fashionable thing to say in an era when writers are encouraged to strive for a 'transparent' style - short, sleek, clear, without massive blocks of descriptive text - and many seem to have taken over the screenwriters' dictum of 'no paragraph over three lines long.'" - Barbara Hambly

Whether one likes Lovecraft or not just a reminder that in general except for basic spelling and punctuation there isn't a "right way" of writing. Write the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it and read what you enjoy.
 
rutger5 said:
Write the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it and read what you enjoy.
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That's exactly how I feel.


Quotes:

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams,

“A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.”
― Rita Mae Brown

“Goals are dreams with deadlines.”
― Diana Scharf

“A professional who doesn't deliver as committed is not just lazy, he is a liar.”
― Amit Kalantri
 
TarnishedPenny said:
OK (frustrated historian speaking...) this is fun! I had always heard it attributed to Churchill, but have done some digging.


You’ll have to excuse my lengthiness—the reason I dread writing letters is because I am so apt to get to slinging wisdom & forget to let up. Thus much precious time is lost.​
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Thanks for the correction. I think I probably read the true Twain quote and later conflated it with the Pascal/Franklin/Thoreau ones.


So, bottom line, probably neither Twain nor Churchill. (Pity, as I admire both of them a lot.) It may well be one of those universal truths that great people come upon independently, like both Newton and Leibniz with calculus.
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As well read as Twain was, I would think that he had come across the earlier ones at some point, and burrowed down into his subconscious and re-surfaced with new clothes, so to speak. I often wonder how much of my allegedly witty remarks came from the same underground source, heard long ago but buried.
 
lovecraft68 said:
Not that I don't enjoy King, especially everything he wrote up until the early nineties, but anytime he says anything about killing your darlings or being brief I roll my eyes. The man is one windy bastard. IN Black House(co authored with Peter Straub and the sequel to their prior collaboration the Talisman) he starts describing a town....every single person of interest in the town, every one...without doing anything to break it up....by page 75 I said fuck this shit.
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Why I stopped reading Michener. Seven pages on a cup of coffee is torture.
 
jomar said:
Why I stopped reading Michener. Seven pages on a cup of coffee is torture.
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He needed to read that how to make a cup of tea essay that's on here about getting carried away with describing every single little thing.
 
Oh, goodness! Subscribing. I am a total quote whore.

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."
~Benjamin Franklin

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.
~ E. L. Doctorow

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

And finally (for today) from Alecia Beth Moore (even though it has nothing to do with writing):

I was brought up to question authority, and thank God for that.
~Pink
 
Last edited:
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. [sic]

On the Art of Writing: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914
Often misattributed, e.g. to Hemingway, Faulkner, and others, or shortened to 'Kill your darlings.'


+++

Quite casually I wander into my plot, poke around with my characters for a while, then amble off, leaving no moral proved and no reader improved. Thorne Smith

+++

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

William Blake
 
"If I haven't any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself." ~Anne Frank
 
"The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from."

Gene Fowler
 
Between 2 characters:

"I spent 4 marriages trying to figure out what makes women happy."

"You spent 4 marriages trying to figure what makes you happy":)
 
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