Thoughts on Writing by Famous Southern California Writers
This month we turn for advice to the rich legacy of musings, encouragement and inspiration from famous Southern California writers who achieved huge success and learned valuable lessons along the way.
”You fail only if you stop writing.” – Ray Bradbury
“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” – Raymond Chandler
“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.” – Raymond Chandler
“Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.” – Joan Didion
“The real trouble with the writing game is that no general rule can be worked out for uniform guidance, and this applies to sales as well as to writing. In the course of six years of more or less intensive study, I’ve seen every rule laid down by a prominent author contradicted by some other equally prominent author.” – Erle Stanley Gardner
“Recipe For Greatness – To bear up under loss; To fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief; To be victor over anger; To smile when tears are close; To resist disease and evil men and base instincts; To hate hate and to love love; To go on when it would seen good to die; To look up with unquenchable faith in something ever more about to be. That is what any man can do, and be great.” – Zane Grey
“We writers, as we work our way deeper into our craft, learn to drop more and more personal clues. Like burglars who secretly wish to be caught, we leave our fingerprints on broken locks, our voiceprints in bugged rooms, our footprints in the wet concrete.” – Ross MacDonald
“There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.” – Will Rogers