I selected a handful of non-fiction quotes from Mark that I really liked. The first four are from various blog posts that I also recommend (links are added to the titles)
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“So write because you enjoy it, but write with passion, be honest, write like your life depends on it, tell your secrets to the page. If it matters to you, it might matter to the reader.”
This one’s for the writers, September 2011
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“A book is the closest you can get to touching another person’s imagination. It’s a singular relationship between the reader and an author just a keystroke away on the other side of the page.”
What reading is…, December 2013
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“What I think might unite us as a common core is that writing is hard – you need to push against an invisible something that doesn’t want to move, and doing so exhausts some secret muscle you didn’t know you had. It requires you to exercise both your imagination and your emotions, stretching both to a degree where it starts to hurt. And beyond that, the sharing of that writing – which undeniably you have put something of yourself into, something personal and generally hidden – that sharing requires courage.”
Triumph Over Tragedy Guest Post, November 2012
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“Storytelling is a biological imperative bound up with the evolution of language and man as a social animal. We’re not herd beasts and we’re not solitary hunters – the story is part of the glue that binds us together. Whether we are the storyteller or the listener we’re taking part in a ritual, we’re finding common ground and constructing a mythology that shapes and guides. These days that mythology is Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Lord of the Rings or some other pervasive tale, but the role of those tales is similar to the ones told around the campfire where we roasted our mammoth steaks – stories reflect, simplify, unify, distil, instruct, guide, amaze…we are the story we tell ourselves – we need many threads to weave that tale.”
Why Do We Need Stories? August 2014
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“Genre titles are like the names of colours – a discrete labeling applied to a continuous spectrum. Red bleeds into orange through an infinite number of shades, fantasy bleeds into horror through darker shades. I use the palette to paint the picture I want and I’ll blend the paints to make colours that don’t have names 😀 Somebody else can decide what shelf to put the result on.”
Facebook comment on when Dark Fantasy becomes Horror, 2013
that thorn guy 