Category Archives: quotes

Woolf quote

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” –Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

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I love you, Arthur Plotnik

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

The Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists, by Arthur Plotnik “What kind of person makes a good editor? When hiring new staff, I look for such useful attributes as genius, charisma, adaptability, and disdain for high … Continue reading →

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Wilde quote

Posted on April 5, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

“I have been correcting the proofs of my poems. In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence…. In the afternoon I put it back again.” –Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

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Gene Wolfe quote, from The Sword of the Lictor, and a lamp

Posted on April 1, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

The image accompanying this post is a lamp from a hotel room in which I stayed recently. It requires no further comment, I hope. I find this quote to be so very, very true: “I have noticed that in books … Continue reading →

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Raymond Chandler on prose style

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will … Continue reading →

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Carol Queen quotes

Posted on March 20, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

The Burning Pen: Sex Writers on Sex Writing, from Carol Queen’s essay. “When I sit down to write, the creative world I access includes not just my experiences and fantasies…but also the entire social discussion about female sexuality.” “I explore … Continue reading →

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Pithy Writing Advice

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

I used to have an orange file folder in which I carried stacks of manuscripts to my writing workshop every couple of months. Inside that folder, I wrote quotes–things that people said while critiquing, some their own, some from another … Continue reading →

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Novel Beginnings: on opening sentences

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

Thanks to a post at Lust in Time, I began thinking about first lines and beginnings of novels, and the idea that novels are supposed to “grab” the reader from the beginning, or “start with a bang.” (I pause to … Continue reading →

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Jane Yolen on plot

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

From Take Joy, by Jane Yolen: “It is the writer’s privilege, really, to order events, to focus on one strand of an existence while ignoring all others. We cannot do this in reality–but we can on the pages of a … Continue reading →

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Simon Sheppard quote

Posted on February 28, 2009 by Victoria Janssen

From The Burning Pen: Sex Writers on Sex Writing, Simon Sheppard’s essay “Mondo Pomo Porno”: “So one of the things porn can do, especially well-crafted, thoughtful erotica, is help convince us that sex is worth not just talking about but … Continue reading →