Brandon L. Rucker

“The first thing I check once I’m inside a story is the emotional weather. Is there a storm coming? What’s the temperature, and how powerful are the winds? The difference between walking on water and sliding one’s ass across slick ice is only a matter of degree.”
― Bob Thurber

“Remember...
Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don’t worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don’t make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why you’re here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don’t stop. Don’t question. Don’t quit. Don’t stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer’s block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up.”
― Bob Thurber

“The true value in education is, I think, the way that it teaches us to investigate ourselves and our world. It often forces us to step outside of ourselves and our experiences, and that is an absolutely essential ability for a writer to have.”
― Kristen Twardowski

“Writing is a blurred mirror. Sometimes we work harder to see how we are reflected, but often we avert our gaze from the shadowy image.”
― Kristen Twardowski