"[…] WRITING BETTER THAN YOU NORMALLY DO"

From: seekextreme

WRITE EVERY DAY

Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about.

DON’T PROCRASTINATE
Procrastination is an alluring siren taunting you to Google the country where Balki from Perfect Strangers was from, and to arrange sticky notes on your dog in the shape of hilarious dog shorts. A wicked temptress beckoning you to watch your children, and take showers. Well, it’s time to look procrastination in the eye and tell that seafaring wench, 'Sorry not today, today I write.'”
— Colin Nissan,  McSweeney's
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Psychos Are People Too

"[...] it doesn't surprise me that many contemporary mysteries and thrillers feature ever-more-violent criminals, ever-more-psychotic murderers, ever-more-deranged serial killers. As our world threatens to tilt into chaos — social, economic, and political — our crime fiction seems to traffic more and more in the realm of the psychologically-disturbed culprit, the villain whose heinous crimes appear totally random, totally senseless.
     Which means, for today's mystery writer, I believe it's also a time to step back and reflect on how truthfully — both in terms of believable narrative and real life itself — a crime story villain is portrayed. [...]
     I can't tell you how often I've read thrillers in which the author's depiction of a 'psycho' killer is pure boiler-plate: unconvincing, unmotivated, without psychological depth or realism. Why is this? Especially when the writer's other characters seem more rounded, realistic, subject to the usual panoply of feelings and motives?"
— Dennis Palumbo, Huffington Post
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