Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

After being Turned Down by numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for Posterity.

1: You Must Write
2: Finish What Your Start
3: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
4: You Must Put Your Story on the Market
5: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold

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

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

"Discipline is the key to all that follows, the bedrock of productive writing. Talent is not a rare commodity. Discipline is."