THE WRITING LIFE

Insights from Writers for Crafting Compelling Fiction

“If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.” — Peter Handke

AI Collaboration based on painting of a landscape by the author.

First, a word of advice from my own experience. When I began my writing career, I didn’t focus on money or fame. My goal was to excel as a writer. To do this I used my local library and read nearly every book about writing, looking for pearls like the ones you find here. Some of these books I also purchased, forming a personal reference library.

There were other things I did, but that’s a longer story and my aim here was to share a few of the insights I gleaned from a few of these personal favorites.

On Writing Fiction

“Though the literary dabbler may write a fine story now and then, the true writer is one for whom technique has become, as for the pianist, second nature.”
J. Gardner — The Art of Fiction

“… whatever the genre may be, fiction does its work by creating a dream in the reader’s mind.”
J. Gardner — The Art of Fiction

“Thus the value of great fiction, we begin to suspect, is not just that it entertains us or distracts us from our troubles, not just that it broadens our…