Reflections – Page 12 – P. K. ABBOT THRILLERS

Clear as a Country Creek

I think most writers, even the best, overwrite. I prefer to underwrite. Simple, clear as a country creek.

—Truman Capote

The Well

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

– Ernest Hemingway

A Quality of Redemption

I’m a disciple of Raymond Chandler, who said in his essays that there’s a quality of redemption in anything that can be called art.

– Michael Connelly

A Rhythmic Thing

When you listen intensely to anything, you see how it can be improved. It’s a rhythmic thing. Like music. You can feel the way that language lifts and turns around itself.

—Sam Shepard

Nothing to it…

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

– Ernest Hemingway

Simply the best…

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

– Ernest Hemingway

People… not characters

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

– Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s Rules

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

—Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s Golden Ratio…

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety nine pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the waste-basket.

—Ernest Hemingway

There’s always room…

There’s always room for a story that can transport people to another place.

– J. K. Rowling