10 Writing Tips From the Masters

Margaret Atwood. Photo: Murdo Macleod

1. “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

   ―Toni Morrison

2. “A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."
   ―Franz Kafka

3. “If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

   ―Margaret Atwood

4. “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
   ―Virginia Woolf

5. “I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word.”

   ―Emily Dickinson

6. “Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case.”
   ― Annie Dillard

7. ““If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

   ―George Orwell

8. “Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.”

   ―Ray Bradbury

9. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

   ―Oscar Wilde

10. “Editing is loving how your writing gets better when there is less of it.”

    ―Gabe Hudson