I had brainwashed myself into saying things like, 'If people don't like what I'm writing then they shouldn't read it.'
You must become aware of the richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there, so that you can write opulently and with self-trust. If you once become aware of it and have faith in it, you will be all right.
What I like to write about is stuff I know. I don't think I could write a novel. I don't think I have it in me to come up with those kinds of characters.
I don't know how it is with other writers, but most of the time when I finish [reading] a story or novel, I may be pleased, I may even be impressed, but somewhere in the back of my mind I'm thinking, I can do that.
Writing has to have a great deal of certainty and self-assurance, but it's not arrogant.
Psych yourself up until you're confident that the world will be interested in what happens to your characters. Confidence is key.
An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.
I wrote a lot of fiction, but it was just college stuff. It seems to me you have to be so confident in yourself to become a writer.
The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
Just as you can practice three-word sentences or sentences that travel across time zones, so can you practice writing sentences that breathe unshakable conviction.
