Vicki Gates

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John Gardner
“It is the nature of stupid people to hide their perplexity and attack what they cannot grasp.”
John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

John Gardner
“The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.”
John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

John Gardner
“the chief offense in bad fiction: we sense that characters are being manipulated, forced to do things they would not really do.”
John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

John Gardner
“Writer's block comes from the feeling that one is doing the
wrong thing or doing the right thing badly. Fiction written for
the wrong reason may fail to satisfy the motive behind it and
thus may block the writer, as I've said; but there is no wrong
motive for writing fiction. At least in some instances, good
fiction has come from the writer's wish to be loved, his wish
to take revenge, his wish to work out his psychological woes,
his wish for money, and so on. No motive is too low for art;
finally it's the art, not the motive, that we judge.”
John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

John Gardner
“Part of the writer's problem may be thee wrong kind of appreciation: hen he does work he knows to be less than he's capable of, his friends praise precisely those things he knows to be weak or meretricious. The writer who cannot write because nothing he writes is good enough, by his own standards, and because no one around him seems to share his standards, is in a special sort of bind:
the love of good fiction that gets him started in the first place makes him scornful of the flawed writing he does (nearly all first-draft writing is flawed) and his sense that nobody cares about truly good fiction robs him of motivation.”
John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

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