To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.

All good plots come from well-orchestrated characters pitted against one another in a conflict of wills.

The opposing missions of the various characters create the plot.

It has been said that Ernest Hemingway would rewrite scenes until they pleased him, often thirty or forty times. Hemingway, critics claimed, was a genius. Was it his genius that drove him to work hard, or was it hard work that resulted in works of genius?

To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.

You will never work through writer's block if you walk away from your typewriter. That will only make it easier to walk away the next time.

For some it is harder to write a novel than to row a bathtub across the North Atlantic.