James Jones - Writer Quotes

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I'm really serious about this writing thing. What time I haven't been writing, I've been reading: Thomas Wolfe, if you know who he is. His writing is mostly built about the central character of a writer, himself. Altho it's fiction, it deals with his life and experiences. In my opinion, little as it's worth, he is the greatest writer that has lived, Shakespeare included. He is a genius.

James Jones
I'm going to ask you something. If I do get killed, and I honestly don't see how I can help it, I want you to write that book we were thinking about when I enlisted. If I get it, it's a cinch I won't be able to do it, and it would make me feel a whole lot better to know that if not my name and hand, at least, the thot of me would be passed on and not forgotten entirely. You know, sort of put into the book the promise that I had and the things I might have written so at least the knowledge of talent wasted won't be lost... If I get it, no one will ever know to what heights I might have gone as a writer. Maybe if you wrote about the promise that was there, all wouldn't be lost.

James Jones
I have discovered only two writers whom I can take all the way, or at least nearly so; and those are Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Wolfe. I think Hemingway is confused on lots of things, just as I think the Fountainhead was confused; but I also think both are magnificently right in many things.

James Jones
I have separate lists titled by characters in which I list each scene concerning that character consecutively and also the proposed scenes for that character along with notes of how I want to write it. So I take these and by them map out ahead the final draft, interlacing the scenes between various characters. Wonderful, isn't it? If I fail as a writer, I can always become a bookkeeper.
I have always been bothered because I couldn't remember details of time, place, etc. and I used to find myself either surrounded by reams of written pages, or else rewriting the same thing three or four times. This helps somewhat to alleviate that.

James Jones