1. “Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.”
2. “Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.”
3. “If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.”
4. “If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.”
5. “The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”
6. “The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.”
7. “I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”
8. “Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.”
9. “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
10. “The writer can only write about what he admires.”
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was born February 27th, 1902, Salinas, California, U.S.A. and died December 20th, 1968, New York City, U.S.A. Steinbeck was an American author best known for, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and many more. Many of his works are considered American classics of Western Literature. In 1962 Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and referred as a giant of American letters.
“The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.” ~ John Steinbeck
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