A Quote by Larry McMurtry

Writing is a form of herding. I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.

Larry McMurtry

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Clusters Form Herd Herding Like Little Paragraph Words Writing

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Larry McMurtry
American - Novelist
Born: June 3, 1936

The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching; instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too; I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.

Larry McMurtry

Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't do that myself. I'm lying to everybody. I write a paragraph, and then I rewrite that paragraph. I want to feel like I'm standing on firm ground before I move on to the next paragraph. Mentally, I have to do that.

Matt de la Pena

Moving in space, the atoms originally were individual units, but inevitable they began to collide with each other, and in cases where their shapes were such as to permit them to interlock, they began to form clusters. Water, air, fire, and earth, these are simply different clusters of the changeless atoms.

Democritus

The biggest was me running Lionhead at its peak. That was about 305 people. I'd say that was, for me as a creative, one of the most hellish times of my life. Normally running a team is like herding cats. This was like herding the entire African plains.

Peter Molyneux

I started writing half a paragraph of a mystery novel, half a paragraph there, and they were terrible.

Rabih Alameddine

True, it is evil that a single man should crush the herd, but see not there the worse form of slavery, which is when the herd crushes out the man.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe.

May Sarton

You don't write a book. You write a sentence and then a paragraph and then a page and then a chapter. Looking at writing 400 plus pages or seventy thousand odd words is incredibly daunting, but if you just focus on the immediate picture - say, 500 words - it's not so overwhelming.

Rebecca Serle

I am terribly interested in the paragraph: the paragraph as an object, the construction, and the possibilities of what a paragraph can do.

Hisham Matar

The eyes of the social herd, who always observe little things, and generally form from them their opinions of great affairs.

Benjamin Disraeli

The god we now behold with opened eyes, A herd of spotted panthers round him lies In glaring forms; the grapy clusters spread On his fair brows, and dangle on his head.

Ovid

A terrific exercise is to take a paragraph of someone's writing who has a really strong style, and using their structure, substitute your own words for theirs, and see how they achieved their effects.

Janet Fitch

What do you get when you cross a herd of sheep with a herd of lemmings? A herd of venture capitalists.

Ben Horowitz

Writing is not like acting, where you can pull these little stunts that create a particular effect. Words are all it is about, and the way you use words has to be individual and particular to you.

Damon Galgut

Words, living and ghostly, the quick and the dead, crowd and jostle the otherwise too empty corridors of my mind ... To move among this bright, strange, often fabulous herd of beings, to summon them at my will, to fasten them on to paper like flies, that they may decorate it, this is the pleasure of writing.

Rose Macaulay

Screenplays are not writing. They're a fake form of writing. It's a lot of dialogue and very little atmosphere. Very little description. Very little character work. It's very dangerous. You'll never learn to write.

Ray Bradbury

A Quote by Larry McMurtry

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