Blog by Toby Welch

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Top 10 Pieces of Advice From Famous Writers

Those who have had writing success share nuggets of wisdom:

Dr. Seuss - “Virtually every page is a cliff-hanger—you’ve got to force them to turn it.”

Stephen King - “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”

Jack London - “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

James Patterson - “If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for a few friends, get a blog. But if you want to write for a lot of people, think about them a little bit. What do they like? What are their needs? A lot of people in this country go through their days numb. They need to be entertained. They need to feel something.”

Anne Lamott - “My older brother was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’"

Elmore Leonard - “Using adverbs is a mortal sin.”

Ernest Hemingway - “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck.”

Danielle Steel - “I always tell writers who are starting out, that if I had quit after the second or third or even fourth unpublished book, I would never have had the career that I do today. So whatever you do, it’s good to stick with it. I like what Winston Churchill said, “Never, never, never, never give up.’”

Dan Brown - “Only one piece of advice: Write a commercial manuscript. This does NOT mean selling or writing a spy novel. Bridges of Madison County and Cold Mountain were both commercial novels.”

John Grisham – “Write at least one page every day, without fail. If you’re trying to write a book, and you’re not writing at least one page a day, then the book is not going to get written.”

And never doubt that if they can do it, you can too! Happy writing!