Laura Z. Hobson Quotes

I would also suggest that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book series. That's like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help you learn your craft.

Sometimes I'm asked if I do research for my stories. The answer is yes and no. No, in the sense that I seldom plow through books at the library to gather material. Yes, in the sense that the first fifteen years of my life turned out to be one big research project.

Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.

Writing has always been an interest of mine, and 'The Language of Flowers' combined my experience with foster care with something I've always wanted to do.

I worked with several writers at the University of Michigan: Nicholas Delbanco, Peter Ho Davies, Eileen Pollack, Laura Kasischke, and Thomas Lynch, who told me the same thing over and over again: Persist. Read, write, and improve: tell your stories.

If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better as a writer as I age.

I couldn't have been the novelist I was without being the journalist I was.

Journalism is a team sport. Writing novels is golf: it's you and the ball.

'Jurassic Park' and 'Star Wars' shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And 'Lord of the Rings' took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write.

I started writing my own things when I was about 8.

I started writing really early on, and my brother Jordan was my first audience. I would come up with scary stories to tell him at bedtime.

Even as a little kid, I told lots of stories, and I wrote them down, and I loved reading fiction and fantasy.

I've been writing since I was really young.

My very first story, I was around 5, and I really just wrote myself. When I was 5, I loved myself so much I gave myself a twin named Tomi. Everything started out fine. But then I didn't write another black character until I was 18.

I think it was Fran Lebowitz who said that there are no writing prodigies. You have to have something to write about.

This is writing. You cut out chunks of your own memories, rework them, bleed into them, breathe into the raw clay, and hope the creature lives.

Young writers shouldn't be afraid of striving to emulate their favorites. It's a good way to learn, as long as you move on from it and don't publish too many of the results.

I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.

I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O' Connor said that anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just get it down.

For years and years I thought that stories were just practice, till I got time to write a novel.

I don't think there is enough respect in general for the time it takes to write consistently good fiction. Too many people think they will master writing overnight, or that they are as good as they will ever be.

You should write, write, write every day, and learn to edit and pare it right back so you're proud of every sentence, and each one is either being useful or beautiful, but hopefully both.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.

Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap. It's like spelunking. You kind of create the right path for yourself. But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I'm going down the wrong hole here. And I can't get back to the right hole. I'm not going to be able to get this section back to the right hole - so I'm just going to have to cut it.

I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night.