The title says it all

How 2 Rite Gud:
Wisdom and Nonsense from 67 years of Writing
Joyce Melton

If you’re asleep, dream; if you’re awake, write.

Edit till it hurts; then stop.

500 words a day is just like 5,000 words a day if they’re the right words.

Describe a scene using three senses, at least one of which is neither sight nor sound.

Find your own congruent memory and use it.

Genericized verbs are invisible: said, looked, moved. Specific verbs must be earned: announced, glimpsed, fell.

The unexpected analogy is like a brick in the toilet bowl.

Careful with those exclamation points; you only get five.
“Per page?”
“No, lifetime.”

If your narrative runs off a cliff, have a nice trip or learn to fly.

Always keep your outline safe in a spare pair of pants.

Starting in the middle is a lot like riding a bicycle on a staircase.

Being a Pan(z)(ts)er is never having to worry about plot armor.

Never write tomorrow what you could have written yesterday.

Pixels don’t bleed unless you’re very, very mean to them.

Now you’ve done it. You broke your short story; it’s going to take a novel to get Billy out of this one.

You owe your reader an ending, and your editor wants the middle, but the beginning is yours and you don’t have to give it up.

Stories should be like school buses, full of snotty noses and paper airplanes.

Every two thousand words or so, someone should do something totally unnecessary.

Place is always the second character in a scene.

The wind may howl, but a dog has feelings, too.

Good villains are worth their weight in semicolons, ellipses, or other currency.

The elephant in the room is reading Proust.

Don’t confuse the landlord with a piece of furniture.

A best friend is like a corpse short one pallbearer.

Shave the cat, shoot the best friend.