Top Ten Quotes from Recognized Experts

1.   A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God. – Sidney Sheldon

2.  If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write. – Somerset Maugham

3. To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. – Herman Melville

4. Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil—but there is no way around them. – Isaac Asimov

5. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer. – Ray Bradbury

6. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer. – Barbara Kingsolver

7. I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged. – Erica Jong

8. Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good. – William Faulkner

9. You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money’s in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed. – Larry Niven

10. No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing. – E. B. White