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It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the ...more

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How anybody can compose a story by word of mouth face to face with a bored-looking secretary with a notebook is more than I can imagine. Yet many auth...more

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[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of pros...more

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I just sit at my typewriter and curse a bit.

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She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.

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I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.

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[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes...more

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My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman's paper called Milady's Boudoir, had recently backed me into a corner and made me promise to write her a few words fo...more

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[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes...more

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The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good.

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I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of w...more

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It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a s...more

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...there was practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen...more

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From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not...more