WoW Saturday
Both "writers on writing" and "words of wisdom" can be shortened with the same word. Thus, welcome to WoW Saturdays, June to September 2011. Enjoy this collection of writers quotes throughout the summer.
"Virgil Thomson, recognized my condition right away. There are two kinds of writers, he said. Those who demand absolute silence and those, like you, who need to hear music, the better to concentrate."
- Edmund White
"The chief social role of writers may well be the extension, complication and enrichment of human intimacy. It is exercised through story, the oldest and most pleasurable way of organizing experience. The primacy of story wasn't first declared by Oscar Wilde or Stéphane Mallarmé, James Joyce or Marcel Proust. It's older than Genesis."
- Richard Stern
"I consider myself primarily a storyteller. I usually start with an idea, some cool scenes in mind, then I develop the plot. As the story starts to come together, then I build the characters who DO the actions. As I get to know the characters, then it becomes clearer what they will do under certain circumstances, and the plot grows and changes."
- Kevin J.Anderson
"I believe that if someone must write a novel, then they must, regardless of the state that publishing is in. However, this doesn't obligate anyone to publish that novel. I have never thought of the current state of publishing when I've written a novel. If it needs writing, it needs writing. I'd encourage anyone with an idea, a dream, and who's up for the hard work involved, to pursue writing fiction, if that's their interest." – Douglas Clegg
"We are none of us really writing about history, but about our own time. What we write speaks to us today, and a few books — those that touch on some universality in the human condition — will continue to speak to people who read them a hundred, five hundred, and even a thousand years from now. What we can do as writers is try to create cultures that provide a window onto another way of looking at the world, so as to reflect ever so slightly back some element of our own — or to create worlds that simply exist for the pleasure of existing."
- Kate Elliott
