"When the thrill of creation is its own reward, we are more inclined to create something lasting and meaningful."

"A book on creativity that insists upon one right way misses the point."

"The antidote to fear is to continually, one day at a time, stay out of the result and place ourselves squarely in the process."

"When we show our work too soon, we are abdicating authority over it. Certainly there comes a point where we need a fresh eye, but until we have done all we can do, we jeopardize our relationship to our initial impulse."

"The art of storytelling involves a willingness to surrender our idea of the way the story should be told, for the way it actually wants to be told."

The 90-Day Novel

"Sometimes, in our creative frenzy, we were not even conscious of what we were writing."

"We never want to force our story into our idea of how it should be structured. Our original impulse was valid. We can trust it and return to it over and over again, even as the story continues to be reshaped."

"There are no rules.  The creative process is as mysterious and as personal as each of us. "

"The same way that a photographer is not fully conscious of why she snaps the picture, there is a similar experience for writers. We are attempting to capture something on the page, a fleeting thought, an experience that we can not quite articulate, an idea that we do not quite understand, and by placing these moments in the context of a story, these experiences can be transmitted to our reader as something larger than we are, something beyond our limited understanding."

"We are seeking to create a story that amuses and entertains while capturing the complexity and truth of the human experience."

"A mysterious force has been guiding us, and when we trust this, we connect to the aliveness of our story."

"Technique without imagination is worthless, and imagination without technique will cloud our work's intended meaning."

"The writer's life is filled with endless unknowns and terminable dreads, but when we acknowledge that the thrill of creation is its own reward, we are the lucky ones."

"Writers often revisit the same themes throughout their careers, examining them from various points of view."

"Let's allow ourselves to have fun, to take risks, to make wild choices, and always, to hold it all loosely.  We are after a sense of aliveness and surprise."

"By inquiring into what we feel strongly about, we are led directly to the seed of a powerful story."

"This is challenging.  It is courageous.  It is something that no one out there will ever encourage us to do.  The desire must come from within.  It is the soft whisper at the edges of our consciousness.  Our soul aches to know life in a way we can't grasp with our conscious mind.  Writers are idealists.  At our best, we are more interested in the nature of things than we are in our own particular struggle."

"We never want our idea of our story to get in the way of letting our characters live." (artist)

"There is enormous value to imagining the world of our story prior to writing it or even outlining it."

"What we feel strongly about is that thing we want to stand on our rooftop and shout to the world, that thing we would die for, that thing we are uniquely qualified to express.  What we feel strongly about is not the plot, but rather the underlying meaning that drives the plot.  What is that thing?  Be curious.  Because that is what your story is about. "

"The desire to write is connected to the desire to evolve."

"When we make the story more important than the result, the story has a chance to live. "

"Creativity is not an occupation; it is our birthright.  It is a way for us to make meaning of our lives, to reframe our relationship to the world, to communicate the deepest aspects of ourselves."