Advice for Writers - 30 Quotes Straight from the Horse's Mouth

After reading numerous books and articles offering advice for writers, I have learned many things. The universal advice seems to be to limit the use of cliches like, "straight from the horse's mouth". The phrase is reported to have origniated with racetrack tipsters saying they got their tips in that manner. Another writing tip is to use one's own voice. If you talk like Erma Bombeck trying to write like Peal Cleage will sound stilted and artifical. If one uses cliches in speech, the two conflicting bits of advice may be counterproductice. Most people are familiar with cliches and expressions, which makes it easier for a writer to make a point.

Using a cliche to title an article might be a writing no-no, but it seemed to best describe my advice to writers and where I derived the advice: straight from the horses mouth. Here are 30 quotes to help inspire, encourage and improve your witing:

1. "The first page of "War and Peace" was once blank." Robert F. Mager

2. "You teach best what you most need to learn." Richard Bach

3. "First you get it down, then you get it right." Unknown

4. "You can drown a thought by expressing it in too many words." Unknown

5. "Never use two words when one will do." Thomas Jefferson

6. "Less is better." Unknown

7. "My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip." Elmore Leonard

8. "Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them." John Ruskin

9. "Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'. Otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." C. S. Lewis

10. "I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need." Aguste Rodin

11 "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

12. "Practice makes perfect." Unknown

13. "Look, what I want to tell you is this." Unknown

14. "Writing is a lot easier if you have something to say." Sholem Asch

15. "One has to live a life that creates a writer." Erno Paasilinna

16. "If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you." Natalie Goldberg

17. "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that." Stephen King

18. "...just keep writing. Keep reading. If you are meant to be a writer, a storyteller, it'll work itself out. You just keepfeeding it your energy, and giving it that crucial chance to work itself out. By reading and writing." Robin McKinley

19. "You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different. Neil Gaiman

20. "The two most engaging powers of an author are, to make new things familiar, and familiar things new." Samuel Johnson

21. "Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon." E.L. Doctorow

22. "Be like the weather, it pays no attention to criticism." Unknown

23. "Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." T. S. Eliot

24. "Why don't you write books people can read?" Nora Joyce, to her husband James

25. "Plato was a bore." Friedrich Nietzsche

26. "Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny." Guy Davenport

27. "They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talk about writing or themselves." Lillian Hellman

28. "Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter." Neil Gaiman

29. "I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite." G. K. Chesterton

30. "Dare to be different." Unknown

Thank you for reading this aritcle and as Rodney Dangerfield would say: "Here, take my advice, I'm not using it."