Indie Writing Quotes

It's a difficult path that we tread, us Indie self-publishers, but we're not alone. How many bands practicing in their dad's garage have heard of a group from the neighbourhood who got signed by a recording company? Or how many artists who love to paint, but are not really getting anywhere with it hear of someone they went to art school with being offered an exhibition in a gallery? How many chefs who love to get creative around food hear of someone else who's just landed a job with Marco Pierre White?
There's no difference between us and them. There is, however, a huge difference in how everyone else perceives the writer. And there's a huge difference between all of us – the writers, the musicians, the composers, the chefs, the dance choreographers and to a certain extent the tradesmen - and the rest of society in that no one understands us. It's a wretched dream to hope that our creativity gets recognised while our family thinks we're wasting our time when the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs painting and the bedroom needs decorating.
It's acceptable to go into the garage to tinker about with a motorbike, but it's a waste of a good Sunday afternoon if you go into the garage and practice your guitar, or sit in your study attempting to capture words that have been floating around your brain forever. ~ Karl Wiggins

My spirit is free. My heart is taken. ~ Crystal Woods

Although erotica authors are being targeted, this is an issue that should concern all indie authors. It affects indies disproportionately because indies are the ones pushing the boundaries of fiction. Indies are the ones out there publishing without the (fading) protective patina of a "traditional publisher" to lend them legitimacy. We indies only have each other. ~ Mark Coker

The Revolution won't be televised. It's already available on Amazon in ebook format. ~ Kenya Wright

Changing imagination into fiction is what I love to do. ~ Eveli Acosta

Indie publishing lets me feed my inner control freak. ~ Michelle M. Pillow

My book sales are way down today. Also, I've received two scathing reviews. One of them calls me a purveyor of insipid wet-dreams. ~ Nenia Campbell

Writing about her felt safe, no longer scary of even dangerous ";
From He wrote Lily. ~ Ahmed Ghrib

I don't know if I have good habits, but I'm very devoted to writing. I'm very compulsive about having a project, at least one, and trying to follow the business as much as I can. I keep on top of all the entertainment business news. ~ Robert Lopez

But now I want to say things that comfort me and that are a little free. For example: Thursdat is a day transparent as an insect's wing in the light. Just as Monday is a compact day. Ultimately, far beyond thought, I live from these ideas, if ideas is what they are. They are sensations that transform into ideas because I must use words. Even just using them mentally. The primary thought thinks with words. ~ Clarice Lispector

Every creator sets up their world differently. That's what's so amazing about someone like Aaron Sorkin and his writing. ~ Lesli Linka Glatter

To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?
trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money! ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

I haven't got time to look for an interesting quote - I'm too busy reading and writing! ~ Lorraine Orman

Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself. ~ Natalie Goldberg

If you're young and talented, it's like you have wings. ~ Haruki Murakami

Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Experience is all I have. I equate song-writing with archeology. Every day you dig. You dig into different places within yourself - even finding places that you've rarely been. And buried within the soil is song. ~ Jon Foreman

It was unavoidable, my writing. I feel I had no choice in the matter, no more than I had about an unfortunate bone structure and a healthy head of hair. ~ Maureen Howard

When you take the right stairs you will arrive at the precise destination. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Anywhere in New York, anywhere in the country, somewhere there's going to be a Coke sign. People identify with Coke. You can write a novel about New York and people from the country will read it if they feel that you've made them familiar with New York. ~ Stephen King

I get a lot of 'Oh, you've been gone.' I wasn't gone. Just because you didn't see me doesn't mean I wasn't working and collecting checks. I just wasn't singing and doing videos. I do a lot of other things, like I said, like writing scripts and stuff like that. I write for other artists. ~ Tionne Watkins

I think we all live dichotomies. I'm a father of three boys and a loyal homebody sort of husband and father. And yet I act in movies and write and direct movies. ~ Tim Blake Nelson

The best thing about writing is the reader ~ Girish Kohli

Most writing is done between the mind and the hand, not between the hand and the page. ~ Janet Burroway

Even though stories ended, there was always something left to be discovered. ~ Amy Koto

We knew each other to our fingertips. No, that's not right. We only knew each other in our fingertips, and that was nothing at all, and for a while that was okay. We could have been a love story, a fairy tale, an indie film about high school and selective insanity featuring a boy of angel parts and a girl made of dreaming. We could have been all the best things: bracelets sliding down arms while shots slid down throats, laughter and crashing music in dark and flashing rooms, kisses that started hesitant but didn't stay that way. ~ Amy Zhang

I believe that writing is an account of the powers of extrication. ~ John Cheever

The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral. ~ Garth Stein

Writing picture books is like playing Tetris with only Z-pieces. ~ Colleen A.F. Venable

Having deadlines helps because people are constantly breathing down my neck, and tapping their toes waiting for pages. So I just have to work nine to five. If I didn't have deadlines then I might be more of a golden hour kind of guy, writing from eight to noon and calling it a day, but that's just not the way I work right now. ~ David Lindsay-Abaire

A word only writes
Its night and rides
Its dream. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

Writing and giving voice to what I am feeling makes me happy. And supporting people in finding their voice, passion, outrage and resistance. There is nothing better than that. ~ Eve Ensler

Sam was about to travel to Asia with her boyfriend and she was fretting about what her backers would think if she released some of her new songs while she was 'on vacation'. She was worried that posting pictures of herself sipping a Mai Tai was going to make her look like an asshole.

What does it matter? I asked her, where you are whether you're drinking a coffee, a Mai Tai or a bottle of water? I mean, aren't they paying for your songs so that you can... live? Doesn't living include wandering and collecting emotions and drinking a Mai Tai, not just sitting in a room writing songs without ever leaving the house?

I told Sam about another songwriter friend of mine, Kim Boekbinder, who runs her own direct support website through which her fans pay her monthly at levels from $5 to $1,000. She also has a running online wishlist of musical gear and costumes kindof like a wedding registry, to which her fans can contribute money anytime they want.

Kim had told me a few days before that she doesn't mind charging her backers during what she calls her 'staring at the wall time'. She thinks this is essential before she can write a new batch of songs. And her fans don't complain, they trust her process.

These are new forms of patronage, there are no rules and it's messy, the artists and the patrons they are making the rules as they go along, but whether these artists are using crowdfunding (which is basically, front me some money so I can ma ~ Amanda Palmer

I believe in not quite knowing. A writer needs to be doubtful, questioning. I write out of curiosity and bewilderment. ~ William Trevor

I think ultimately it's just time management. You're just doing a lot more stuff. You're doing the same stuff, you're writing and you're producing, but it just comes with a lot of other things. A lot of long term thinking and plotting things out for the future, bringing elements together. I have a lot of support. ~ Scott M. Gimple

All writing is ultimately a question of solving a problem. ~ William Zinsser

To try and imagine that I'm another person is always going to be hard - whether I'm writing about a truck driver or someone who is gay, who's trans, who is of a different ethnicity or creed. But it would be boring if I always had to write about myself and my limited viewpoint. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

I think parts of my soul have been saved by my writing, not in the sense of escaping death, but escaping the death of the moment, perhaps. ~ Pattiann Rogers