Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

Fiction structures an experience for the reader to live through. ... That is why people read: to have experiences.

I spent the morning smashing fliesI killed one fly against the doorjamb. Another I stalked into the kitchen...A third fly wavered by the kitchen window. When I swatted, a wild ferocious swing, a whole trembling crowd shot from the window like pebbles from a blunderbuss, then settled back. My heart pounded. I felt flushed with disgust and irritation. Why must I always have such obstacles to my writing?

Envy is one of the scorpions of the mind, often having little to do with the objective, external world.

Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.