Note the differences of advice between the three!

Kurt Vonnegut
http://melanconent.com/lib/rev/bagombosnuffbox/creativewriting.html

Elmore Leonard
http://www.kabedford.com/archives/000013.html

Chuck Palahniuk
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/workshop/essays/chuck-palahniuk

If you want to write, read it.  It you already write, read it.  It is part personal memoir, and part writing instruction.  He makes you feel like anyone can do it.  (Which isn't really the case, but still).  Good, common sense stuff, delivered  in a no-nonsense manner; you feel like you're having a conversation at a restaurant over dinner - or at a ( Read more... )

More quotes:

From Mark Budman's essay:  "After all, a writer is a professional exhibitionist.  The reader is the voyeur he hopes to lure."  :D

From Pia Z. Erhardt's essay  (bolding mine, because I love that part especially) :  "...Sometimes this clarity comes toward the end, sometimes it's in the first paragraph.  In my own stories, the load-bearing ( Read more... )

I'm reading The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, edited by Tara L. Masih.  Therein are essays by notable writers in the genre.  Interesting stuff.  I have to say that Flash Fiction really is my first love; even though I don't write as much flash as I do other stuff.  My average word count for things seems to be around 3500 - ( Read more... )