“Your job is to write the best book you can. Period. Every time. Don't 'save' anything for later. Don't leave anything on the mat. If the idea sweeps you up in its fury, ride the dang wave.”— Delilah S. Dawson, twitter.com
“The really important point here is that your debut book/series/year DOES NOT PREDICT YOUR CAREER. It's not any indicator of future success. Publishers know and understand this. Just keep writing the best books you can. Keep innovating without fear. Keep that hope.”— Delilah S. Dawson, twitter.com
“Writing a novel — you alone in a room with your own thoughts — might be the only way to get a maximal kind of satisfaction from your creative efforts. All the other ways can break your heart.”— Taffy Brodesser-Akner, nytimes.com
“Writing a novel is all about leaving breadcrumb trails for yourself and having the presence of mind to be able to look back and see those trails and use them wisely.”— Jami Attenberg, twitter.com
“Something we don't talk about when it comes to worldbuilding is the power of NOT explaining something. Sometimes, just throwing out a word and letting the audience wonder what that could be is a good thing.”— Sam Sykes, twitter.com
“Writing a plot is super easy. First, think of a character. Then, think of what they want. Then, spend 600-odd pages keeping them from getting it.”— Sam Sykes, twitter.com
“Tonight I sat down to write and found nothing happening. This has happened to me ten thousand times before and no time has it ever been helped by berating myself, yet that's immediately what I did. It's weird how this job induces selective amnesia.”— Sam Sykes, twitter.com
“Ideally, every event in a book should serve a purpose. But it’s totally fine to write a scene because you want to and figure out its purpose later.”— Sam Sykes, twitter.com
“A novel has roughly six stages of 'done.' 1: 'I know how it ends, but not how to do it.' 2: 'I know how to do it, but haven't written it.' 3: 'I wrote it, but it sucks.' 4: 'I wrote it again, but it needs work.' 5: 'I finished the work, but I'm still not happy.' 6: 'good enough'”— Sam Sykes, twitter.com
“Here's one thing that makes it hard to finish a novel: Going down the Twitter rabbit hole.”— Gayle Forman, twitter.com