Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Short stories are often strong meat. Reading them, even listening to them, can be challenging, by which I do not mean hard work, simply that a certain amount of nerve and maturity is required. "

Related Quotes:

" I tend to research as I write so that the narrative can take priority, which is important for a piece of fiction, I think, finding out facts as and when I need to. "

Sarah Hall

Facts

Research

Need

" Show, don't tell, is a mantra repeated by tutors of creative writing courses the world over. As advice for amateurs, it is sound and helps avoid character profiling, unactivated scenes, and broken narrative frames. "

" When you are a kid, a wolf is an amazing sight, so sumptuous. I sort of knew these were splendid creatures, that I was not going to find them outside roaming around. It was like a dog, but not a dog. It was incredible, a god! "

" Daniel Woodrell has made a name as a master of prose with personality - a densely descriptive, gamey form of storytelling, one might say traditional storytelling - of late rather an unfashionable mode. "

" Writers cannot simply have a go, imagining it's easier to produce a story than a novel because fewer words are required. Have a go by all means; be intrepid, but be equipped. "

Sarah Hall

Than

Words

" There's nothing like the vast, dark Atlantic to remind you of your mortality. But terror can also be exhilarating. "

Sarah Hall

Dark

Your

" Over the years, I've lived in a variety of places, including America, but I was born and raised in the Lake District, in Cumbria. Growing up in that rural, sodden, mountainous county has shaped my brain, perhaps even my temperament. "

" Having judged a few competitions, it's clear that novelists are often the laziest short story writers. "

" Swimming in the U.K. is not really about enjoying a sultry experience. It's about cold, clear acts of purification, and constitutional durability. It's about invigoration and bravado. "

" My writing is called exotic or avant-garde because I write about rural places. Has it really come to this, that if you write about the country you are avant-garde? How did this happen? Modern agriculture and spaces are still so relevant. "

" I write in the mornings or afternoons - I'm not a night owl and can write for only four or five hours maximum. "

" I don't think practitioners should necessarily be advertising their work. "

" I don't reckon there are many writers who start out really expecting writing to be an attainable occupation. Well, I didn't. It was a pipe dream. "

" I was brought up in the north of England, which is probably no rougher than anywhere else, but I remember as a child being kind of mesmerized by girls fighting on the playground. "

Sarah Hall

Remember

Kind

" I've always been interested in wolves, since I was a child. There was a wolf enclosure in a wildlife park very close to where I was brought up; they were the main attraction. "

" I wander around the house and write in bed, at the kitchen table, by the window, in the yard. "

" Writing, and its theatre of operation, is better than working shifts packing frozen sausages; that's all I need to think about if I'm having difficulties. "

" I was brought up in Cumbria where I saw all these fierce agricultural women. "

Sarah Hall

Women

Saw

" Quite a lot is required of writers these days in terms of, if not promoting the work, then being a representative of the work. It's a difficult thing, really. "

" I don't like novels that tie everything up in a plot-y way. I always think that's not really true of life, particularly of people in power. "

" I'm very aware of modern countryside issues, such as rewilding: how, as science progresses, we begin to understand that a healthy ecosystem is multiform. "

" Our lives are politically wound. "

" The short story is very good at looking at shadow psychologies and how the system breaks down underneath. "

" I'm a home-roamer and can't do study or office scenarios. "

" I felt impelled to write. It felt demonic, and I wanted to improve, the way some people habitually pick up a guitar and get better at playing it and making up songs. "

" I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown. "

" I studied the short story as part of my creative writing course at university but then set off as a novelist. Generally, there is a sense that even if you want to write short stories, you need to do a novel first. "

" Swimming in the cold and the dark of British autumn is not for the faint-hearted. "

" Set in a nameless colonial country, in an unspecified era, Katie Kitamura's second novel tracks the fortunes of a landowning family during the first waves of civil unrest. "

" I was the feral, mud-bathing, tree-climbing variety of child. Why would I want to read about pirates when I could build a raft and terrorise sheep along the riverbanks? "