A Quote by Jami Attenberg

I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.

Jami Attenberg

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About Books First Immediate Out Place Start Think Writing Your

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Jami Attenberg
American - Author

To write more from memory and to be more creative - I think - because I am still writing about Los Angeles but I can't walk out my door and immediately drive to places I am writing about. So I think it has been a very good change for me after 11 books to start writing this way.

Michael Connelly

I think plays, like books, are endemic. They grow out of the soil of the writer and the place he's writing about. I think, you just can't move them about, you know.

Peter Shaffer

The Internet is a limitless library at your fingertips. It's a great place to start with the acquisition of knowledge. My process is to go to a place when I'm writing about it. Nothing captures the essence, feeling and flavor of a place better than when I'm actually there and doing the writing.

Barry Eisler

The first book is the book you have to write to get back at your parents; the book you always had in you. Once you get that out of your way, you can start writing books.

Shirley Jackson

A library is many things. It's a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It's a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books---the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go.

E. B. White

The first several scenes are about sexual addiction. They're not specifically political at all... I didn't sit down and think, ''I am going to write something about the religious right.'' I started out by writing something about sexual addiction, and it evolved... I don't look at a calendar and say: ''Oh! There's going to be an election in 1996. I think now, in 1993, I'll start writing a play that'll be ready for it.''

Christopher Durang

I look at my first books and am glad they weren't published.... You start writing by imitating your heroes, then you keep the heart of that worship in your work. As time goes by, you get other influences and find your own voice.

Markus Zusak

When you write a song about a place, you are writing a song about a place that might be in a hundred years, or a place that has been, or that was - in your imagination. I think that also embodies the American spirit. You are looking for what you can call "a place."

Justin Vernon

I couldn't have articulated this process at the time; I just sort of did it instinctually. But now when I talk about this with my students all the time, it's one of the first things I address in memoir classes - that you have to put it all in because you're writing your way into the ending of your own story. Even if you think you know what the story is, you don't until you write it. If you start leaving things out you could leave out vital organs and not know it.

Melissa Febos

The thing I worry about is, what happens when your talent flees? Because you see that with writers sometimes: they start writing these awful books. And there's something sort of horrifying about it.

Sheila Heti

I taught everyone a very bad lesson at my publisher because they actually gave me deadlines this time and I'm now meeting them. I used to say, "Here's my book; it's six years late." I'm so much faster now, and work differently. With all the years of writing, I think I still draft as obsessively, but I think back to writing. On your first story, you start at draft one. On your second story, you start at draft ten. On your third story, you start at draft one hundred. If you need a hundred and eight drafts, you may write eight instead of a hundred and eight.

Nathan Englander

The odd thing about being a writer is you do tend to lose yourself in your books. Sometimes it seems like real life is flickering by and you're hardly a part of it. You remember the events in your books better than you remember the events that actually took place when you were writing them.

George R. R. Martin

I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.

Val McDermid

Writing about a place is, of course, one good way of feeling close to it, feeling you have made something out of your interaction with that place. It's like a marker of your own experience, of that time in your life.

Sean Michael Wilson

You've got to be a good reader. So whatever genre that you're interested in, read a lot of books about it and it's better than any kind of writing class you'll ever take. You will absorb techniques and then in a lot of cases you can just start writing using the style of the book or the author that you admire and then your own style will emerge out of that. Be a diligent reader and then try to write seriously, professionally and approach everything in writing in a professional way.

Homer Hickam

Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don't really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, "how to" books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.

Hilary Mantel

A Quote by Jami Attenberg

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