“Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as “good” and other sorts as “bad,” is fearful behavior. Good writing is also about making good choices when it comes to picking the tools you plan to work with.”
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles.”
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“you need to remember is that there’s a difference between lecturing about what you know and using it to enrich the story. The latter is good. The former is not.”
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Nora’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Nora’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Polls voted on by Nora
Lists liked by Nora





























