Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Stephen KingRead
Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.
Interpretation
Writers can be subjective about their own work, often misjudging its quality.
This quote by Stephen King highlights the idea that writers may struggle with objectivity when evaluating their own creations. They can be overly critical or too fond of what they've written, leading to a lack of accurate self-assessment regarding their work's impact or quality. Such a perspective underscores the emotional and subjective nature of the creative process.
In practice
This quote could be shared at a writers' workshop to remind participants to seek external feedback.
Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.
Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.
For me a page of good prose is where one hears the rain. A page of good prose is when one hears the noise of battle.... A page of good prose seems to me the most serious dialogue that well-informed and intelligent men and women carry on today in their endeavor to make sure that the fires of this planet burn peaceably.
I assume I don't need an introduction.
The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.
As a reader I loathe introductions...Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.
You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility.
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