Rachel Aaron Quotes

“Why are mortals always so eager to declare things impossible, anyway? It's not like things do or don't exist just because you say so.”

— Rachel Aaron

“First rule of thievery,' Eli said, grinning, 'only run if you're not coming back.' ( ... ) 'First rule of thievery, never use the same entrance twice.' Miranda rolled her eyes. 'How many 'first rules' of thievery do you have?' 'When one mistake can mean your head on a pike, every rule's a first rule,' Eli said cheerfully.”

— Rachel Aaron

“Don't tell me the Pigeon Whisperer dragged you into one of his stupid schemes.”

— Rachel Aaron

How did you get in here?' ( ... ) 'How I got here isn't important, because I could do it twenty times again, each time a different way.

— Rachel Aaron

“I am a mage," she replied with every ounce of haughtiness three years in a competitive doctoral program had taught her. "We bend the rules of the universe on a daily basis. Presumptuousness is the base line for entry.”

— Rachel Aaron

“As soon as the cold became uncomfortable, Eli had opened his shirt and had a nice long chat with the burn on his chest. Karon was happy to help them stick it to the ice and wind spirits, and he cheerfully kept the air around Eli as warm and dry as a smokehouse.
"I only wish it didn't reek of sulfur," Josef said, pressing up the mountainside. "I'd almost rather deal with the cold."
"Well, don't let me stop you," Eli huffed, though even he looked a little green. "Who am I to stand between a man and his frostbite?”

— Rachel Aaron

“Sometimes the price of doing the right thing is higher than we realize when we do it.”

— Rachel Aaron

“Why are you still complaining?" Miranda said. "It didn't help yesterday; it didn't help two weeks ago. What makes you think it'll help now?”

— Rachel Aaron

Help us, Juli-wan Kenobi, you're our only hope."
For a moment, that almost, almost made Julius feel like a hero. And then he remembered. "Doesn't Obi-Wan die in that movie?

— Rachel Aaron

“Even if you're not selling your stories yet, your writing time is precious, often gained at the expense of other worthwhile activities. Don't waste it on a book you don't love.”

— Rachel Aaron

“A book is not a battle, nor is it a conquest. A book is a story, and telling it should be an enjoyable exercise.”

— Rachel Aaron

“So far as I can tell, 'good dragon' is just another name for coldblooded sociopath," he said. "No friends, no trust, no love. Why would I ever want to live like that? It's not like any of you good dragons are happy.”

— Rachel Aaron

Well, he's not really my friend," Julius admitted. "I don't even know his real name, actually, but I was his healer in the game, and the bond between healer and tank runs deep.

— Rachel Aaron

“I though the Black Reach lived in China."
"That doesn't mean anything," Bob said with a shrug. "The Black Reach doesn't have to be in the same hemisphere to meddle in you affairs. He didn't get his name for having unusually long arms, you know.”

— Rachel Aaron

“Putting my book down should be the hardest thing my reader has to do that day. Authorship is a merciless business!”

— Rachel Aaron

“Don't try to nice your way out of this. It's insulting.”

— Rachel Aaron

“Specifically, I ask that my scenes do three things: Advance the story Reveal new information Pull the reader forward”

— Rachel Aaron

“That said, some of my best scenes and most dramatic scenes have actually been the ones I've combined to get my word count down.”

— Rachel Aaron

“But you're looking at this all wrong, Julius. Assassination attempts aren't a threat. They're a compliment. They're the final strike, the last desperate move when every other plot has failed." Ian winked at him. "When they try to kill you, that's when you know you're winning." Julius”

— Rachel Aaron

So, I started keeping records. Every day I sat down to write, I would note the time I started, the time I stopped, how many words I wrote, and where I was writing on a spreadsheet

— Rachel Aaron

“The longer I wrote, the faster I wrote, and, I believe, the better I wrote.”

— Rachel Aaron

The days when I broke 10k were the days when I was writing scenes I'd been dying to write since I planned the book.

— Rachel Aaron

“If I had scenes that were so boring I didn't want to write them, then there was no way anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn't love it, no one would.”

— Rachel Aaron

“Every day, while I was writing out my description of what I was going to write for the knowledge component of the triangle, I would play the scene through in my mind and try to get excited about it. I'd look for all the cool little hooks, the parts that interested me most, and focus on those since they were obviously what made the scene cool. If I couldn't find anything to get excited over, then I would change the scene, or get rid of it entirely. I decided then and there that, no matter how useful a scene might be for my plot, boring scenes had no place in my novels.”

— Rachel Aaron

“Writing a very personal journey, but that doesn't mean it has to be a slow one. Sometimes, all it takes is a new way of looking at the problem to change everything.”

— Rachel Aaron

“The point I'm trying to make is that by recording my progress every day, I had the data I needed to start optimizing my daily writing.”

— Rachel Aaron

“Now, instead of treating bad writing days as random, unavoidable disasters to be weathered, like thunderstorms, I started treating them as red flags.”

— Rachel Aaron

Once I shifted my thinking, though, I stopped roughing myself up and started asking Why? Why don't you want to write? What's wrong? And while the answers were never pleasant (because really, it's no fun to realize you messed up and now you have to rewrite a scene, or a chapter, or half a book), they were progress, and they were necessary. They were also extremely good for me, because once I got my story back on the right track, my bad writing days vanished, my daily word counts shot up, the quality of my writing improved, and life in general got a whole lot better.

— Rachel Aaron

“Storytelling is a business of unique snowflakes. Every writer is different; every book is different; every reader is different. This is why it's so hard to give writing advice, because what works for me might be poison to someone else. But if I could make one absolute assertion, it would be this: If you are not enjoying your writing, you're doing it wrong. A book is not a battle, nor is it a conquest. A book is a story, and telling it should be an enjoyable exercise. So the next time you don't want to write, don't waste time beating yourself up. Instead, stop and ask yourself why. Why do you not want to do this fundamentally enjoyable thing? What's really going on?”

— Rachel Aaron

The single most efficient change you can make isn't actually upping your daily word count, but eliminating the days where you are not writing.

— Rachel Aaron

“Every writing session after this realization, I dedicated five minutes (sometimes more, never less) and wrote out a quick description of what I was going to write that day.”

— Rachel Aaron

“One of the hardest things I've had to learn as a writer is that while virtually any story can be a good book if done correctly, not every story should. It's possible to have an amazing idea and still lack the interest necessary to polish it to publication level shine. I can not tell you the number of books I've plotted, written 30k words in, and then abandoned because I simply could not stand to look at them another second. Every single one of these ideas looked great on paper, and maybe in another author's hands they could have been golden, but in the end I just didn't care enough to push through.”

— Rachel Aaron

“What we did and who we were are just dregs compared to who we are now and how we act when the sword is coming down.”

— Rachel Aaron

“As such, the first question you should be asking yourself isn't "Is this a good book?" but "Is this really the story I want to spend my time on?”

— Rachel Aaron