TV Writing

TV writing is for people who hate being alone more than they hate writing.

Matthew Weiner

Getting Into A Writing Program

  When I went to writing school, I craved rules. I craved a mentor, and the revelation of secrets, and the permission to write scads, and most of all I craved the confirmation that I could write. In other words, I was like practically everyone else.

    What a mystique writing programs have! A sense of promise emanates from their doors, wafts up from the embossed paper bearing their letterheads. I felt that being accepted to one, and especially to that bizarrely exotic one nestled in the middle of America, Iowa, was like being chosen for an initiation into mysteries. After all, what could be more mysterious than learning how to write?

Bonnie Friedman

Who Do Writers Write For?

I made the decision very early on in my career to put everyone out of my mind when I write. Relatives, editors, Hollywood, critics. I have no reader in mind. I think it's death to a writer to consider how anyone will view their work. One writes for oneself in much the same way one daydreams for oneself.

Anita Shreve

Writing Narrative Nonfiction

Some people criticize nonfiction writers for "appropriating" the techniques of fiction writing. These techniques, except for the invention of characters and detail, never belonged to fiction. They belong to storytelling.

Tracy Kidder 

A Writer Without a Literary Hero to Inspire Him

I am not so worried about whether I am writing any good or not; I know I write a valley of bad stuff. But what gets me is that nobody is coming on that I can believe in or look up to. It's hell not to have a hero.

Charles Bukowski 

What is Literary Style?

Style is an author's choice of words (diction), arrangement of words in each sentence (syntax), and handling of sentences and paragraph units to achieve a specific effect.

David Madden

Novels Would Benefit From Less psychobabble And More Action

Literature has become too psychological. We discount the physical, when in fact much of life is physical. People's personalities are partly formed by, or in response to, how they take up space.

Karan Mahajan