Literary Birthday – 24 April – David Morrell

Happy Birthday, David Morrell, born on 24 April 1943.

David Morrell Quotes 

1. There are no inferior types of fiction, only inferior practitioners of them.
2. As much as I like it when a book I’m writing speeds along, the downside can be that an author becomes too eager to finish and rushes the end. The end is even more important than the first page, and rushing can damage it.
3. Don’t give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn’t what you thought it would be.
4. When I teach at writers’ conferences, I always begin by asking my students, ‘What defect in your personality makes you want to be writers?’ They chuckle, assuming that I’ve made a joke. But my question is deadly serious. Writing is so difficult, requiring such discipline, that I’m amazed when someone wants to give it a try.
5. To all librarians everywhere, God bless you.
6. The difference between fiction writers and civilians is that we make it our life’s work to put our daydreams and day-nightmares on paper.
7. Writers write. It’s that basic. If you just got off an assembly line in a factory and you’re certain you have the great American novel inside you, you don’t grab a beer and sit in front of the TV. You write. If you’re a mother of three toddlers and at the end of the day you feel like you’ve been spinning in a hamster cage and yet you’re convinced you have a story to tell, you find a way late at night or early in the morning to sit down and write.
8. On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith.
9. Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.
10. When I teach writing, I have a mantra: Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.
11. A thriller must be thrilling. A mystery may or may not be a thriller depending on how much breathless emotion it has, as opposed to cerebral calculation.
12. You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, ‘This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I’m doing the best I can – buy me or not – but this is who I am as a writer.’
13. ‘What if?‘ Through the alchemy of those two words, something new comes into the world.

David Morrell is an award-winning Canadian novelist. He is well known for his 1972 novel First Blood, which would later become the successful Rambo film franchise. He has written more than 30 novels, has sold millions of books, and his work has been translated into 26 languages. Other international bestsellers, include the classic spy trilogy, The Brotherhood of the Rose, The Fraternity of the Stone, and The League of Night and Fog. Morrell is a co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organization. He has been trained in firearms, hostage negotiation, assuming identities, executive protection, and defensive/offensive driving, among numerous other action skills that he describes in his novels. His writing book, The Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing, discusses what he has learned in his more than four decades as an author. His latest novels are the highly praised Victorian mystery/thriller trilogy, Murder As A Fine Art, Inspector of the Dead, and Ruler of the Night. They explore the fascinating world of 1850s London. Follow him on Facebook.

Source for image: David Morrell Gallery

by Amanda Patterson

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