Writing Advice from Stephen King and Oscar Wilde

Imagine being in a writing class with Stephen King and Oscar Wilde. What a class that would be….  To get the unique flavor of this unprecedented class, here are some quotes from these authors.


“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde

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“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King, On Writing

“This morning, I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.”
― Oscar Wilde

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“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

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“Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”
― Stephen King

“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”
― Oscar Wilde

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“His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.”
― Stephen King

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“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.”
― Stephen King

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”
― Oscar Wilde

From the Mouth of Oscar Wilde…

Oscar Wilde is an Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic who lived from 1854 to 1900. For some reason, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) has been one of my favorite reads. Something about the mask vs the true being fascinates me. Oscar led a wild life (sorry, couldn’t help the pun), going to prison and dying destitue in Paris at the age of forty-six. But, his genius lives on and on.

BTW, his complete name was Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde...how could he not end up as a poet and dramatist with a name like that?

Here are some quotes from him that even today could relate to modern writers:

Art never expresses anything but itself.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

And I leave you with this last quote from Oscar Wilde:

All great ideas are dangerous.

Writing As Heaven, Writing As Hell!

Writing as Heaven Viewpoint:

Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling

Every word written is a victory against death.
Michel Butor

Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write.
James T. Farrell

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Lord Byron

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
Gloria Steinem

The pen is the tongue of the mind.
Miguel de Cervantes

Writers aren’t exactly people… they’re a whole bunch of people trying to be one person.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writing as Hell Viewpoint: 

What a writer wants to do is not what he does.
Jorge Luis Borges

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer – and if so, why?
Bennett Cerf

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Robert A. Heinlein

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.
Red Smith

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
Truman Capote

If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.
John Dos Passos

It’s all how you see it: Heaven or Hell…which is it for you? Or maybe it’s both, in which case, it explains why writers tend to be a bit nuts!

A Writing Primate

Re-Write Madness.

Every Good Dog Jumps Over the Moon

All Good Dog Jumps Over the Moon

All Good Dogs Jumps Over the Moon

All Good Dogs Jump Over the Moon

All Good Dogs Hump Over the Moon

A Dog Humps Over the Moon

A Dog Humps the Moon

Damn Dog Humping Again.

————————– or as the quote says below—————————————-

I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.
Alan Dean Foster