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10 of the Best Quotes About Writing from YA Authors
On September 23, select Barnes & Noble stores will be hosting our second annual B-Fest, a nationwide event devoted to celebrating all the best young adult literature has to offer. Included among the festivities? Our B Creative event at 5 p.m., featuring story development workshops created by Barnes & Noble’s NOOK and Adaptive Studios, perfect for aspiring writers. Whether you’ve long been working on a book of your own, or have only just begun to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), these quotes from YA authors will inspire you to get started, keep going, and finally finish your novel.
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“Never feel that you’re ‘married’ to an idea, even if it was the original idea that sparked the story. It might have to go, like a scaffolding that comes down after a mural is painted.”
–Laini Taylor, author of Strange The Dreamer
“When we speak about context, we’re looking at something beyond the simple fact of setting. Setting is a place and a time, but when we add the complications of power, politics, privilege—then we are beginning to build a rich, nuanced environment to deploy our characters across. This is context.”
– Daniel José Older, author of Shadowshaper
“It is not just you who feels like a fraud, or isn’t sure if you’re a ‘real’ writer, or doesn’t know what a ‘real’ writer even means.”
–Dahlia Adler, author of Just Visiting
“A book, like a child, has its own life once it leaves my hands. For me, that’s one of the great charms of writing: that people interact with my novels unmediated by me, and they have the most interesting reactions, some positive, some negative, some mixed, at times provocative and even irritating or bizarre, and often thoughtful and enlightening.”
–Kate Elliott, author of Poisoned Blade
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“The rules on what is possible and impossible in the arts were made by people who had not tested the bounds of the possible by going beyond them.”
–Neil Gaiman, author of The Sleeper and the Spindle
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“If you’re struggling with what you’re writing—if you’re afraid to be your true self on the page—I dare you to stop listening to the outside voices and try listening only to yourself this one time. Write the book you most want to write…Write the book that is the most unapologetically YOU, no matter how long it takes.”
–Nova Ren Suma, author of The Walls Around Us
“The first draft isn’t about getting it right, it’s about getting it done.”
–Ava Jae, author of Beyond the Red
“I’ve come to believe that if you’re not scared at least a little by what you’re writing, it’s probably not important enough to write.”
–Malinda Lo, author of Adaptation
“Overnight Success is almost always a myth. Half of this industry is luck, and half is the refusal to quit.”
–Victoria Schwab, author of This Savage Song
“Every sentence needs a subject, verb, and explosion.”
–Corinne Duyvis, author of On the Edge of Gone