Not Writing Quotes

Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not. ~ Kathryn Hughes

Planning to write is not writing. ~ E.L. Doctorow

You can spend a day in a library and feel: 'Great, I've done a day's work.' But it's only research, not writing. ~ Richard Flanagan

Usually the poems are written in one sitting. There's always a groping towards some satisfying ending. But I'd say the hardest part is not writing. Once the writing starts, it's too pleasurable to think of it as a difficulty. ~ Billy Collins

Capote's rejoinder to the Kerouac assertion that he never needed to edit his writing: "That's not writing .That's typing. ~ Joseph Cavano

I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from. ~ Flannery O'Connor

I had made all these rules for myself: I'm not writing social commentary, I'm not writing love songs. ~ Joni Mitchell

I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing. ~ Natalie Goldberg

There are too many people writing about whether they just farted or not. ~ Mick Hucknall

I'm not much of a correspondent. My letters are not only uninteresting but sparse. I'm glad I don?t have to write for a living. It?s arduous work and the money is very uncertain. On those rare occasions when I wander into a bookstore it amazes me to see the avalanche of literature and semi-literature that is turned out weekly in this country. The people who write these things are either desperate for money or love starved. Why should anyone on a nice balmy day lock oneself in an office and hit a typewriter for hours on end. I think one of the greatest pleasures in the world is not writing ... ~ Groucho Marx

There is a great quote from a female writer. She said, 'If you don't break out in a sweat of fear when you write, you are not writing well enough. I tend to agree. I think my best pictures come when I push myself. ~ Sally Mann

Writing it seemed to have higher quality than not writing it, that was all. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

It's not like I'm not writing great music anymore, it's just that I want to take it another level. ~ Drake

Never reward writing with not writing. Rewarding writing by abandoning your schedule is like rewarding yourself for quitting smoking by having a cigarette. ~ Paul J. Silvia

If it were up to me ... " and then the words pound, desperate and hard, "I'd write this story differently." ...
"Just that maybe ... maybe you don't want to change the story, because you don't know what a different ending holds."
The words I choked out that dying, ending day, echo. Pierce. There's a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means.
I don't. ~ Ann Voskamp

Literacy in North America has historically been focused on reading, not writing; consumption, not production. ~ Clive Thompson

When I'm fishing, I feel guilty that I'm not writing, and when I'm writing, I feel guilty that I'm not fishing. But when push comes to shove, I'll always take the writing. ~ Raymond Carver

Writing. Not writing. Twin Terrors. Putting one's mother into words ... It may have been easier to put her in her grave. ~ William H Gass

I started writing an album on flights to Africa and Brazil, but it was crazy because I left the notebook on the plane. It had seven or eight songs in it. After that, I'm not writing any more songs on notebooks - and I keep my Blackberry close! ~ Estelle

You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing that while not writing ... ~ Josip Novakovich

When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both. ~ Joseph Brodsky

You write the way you think about the world. My motto in times of trouble - and I'm speaking of life, not writing - is 'no humor too black.' ~ Elizabeth McCracken

I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination. ~ John Irving

I'm not writing to make anyone's children feel safe. ~ J.K. Rowling

My history is really playing live - not writing or recording. ~ Tom Jenkinson

Writing is a lonely life; if you're not lonesome you're not writing. Sometimes I have to go out to my yard and pound out a verb or twist out a character that is building in my mind. ~ Milleville, Richard

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. ~ John Updike

You are not writing properly unless someone is bleeding, probably you. ~ Robert Galbraith

You would like to know how I behave when I am experiencing pain, not writing books about it. You need not guess, for I will tell you; I am a great coward... If I knew any way of escape I would crawl through sewers to find it. But what is the good of telling you about my feelings? You know them already; they are the same as yours. I am not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That is what the word means. I am only trying to show that the old Christian doctrine of being made 'perfect through suffering' is not incredible. To prove it palatable is beyond my design. ~ C.S. Lewis

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written. ~ Robert Hass

I'm an aspiring writer.' I hate that phrase. You're either a writer or you're not. ~ Jake Black

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

There are these boutique writers out there who think if they are not writing their novels sitting at a bistro with their laptops, then they're not real writers. That's ridiculous. ~ Rick Bragg

If anyone ever wonders why there's nothing coming from me, it's not my fault. I'm doing the work. No, I haven't deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can't get anything into print. And apparently I'm not alone in this. There are people of very high standing, authors who are having problems. So I have been told. In my own case, the more disturbing element is the editor-in-chief who said to me, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it
I've been told I mustn't." The indication is that I'm not writing what people want to read, but I never did. ~ Tanith Lee

You can't build a plot out of jokes. You need tragic relief. And you need to let people know that when a lot of frightened people are running around with edged weaponry, there are deaths. Stupid deaths, usually. I'm not writing 'The A-Team' - if there's a fight going on, people will get hurt. Not letting this happen would be a betrayal. ~ Terry Pratchett

You'll learn that the key to a great book is editing - grinding, buffing, and polishing - not writing. ~ Guy Kawasaki

I feel like my blood a giant river swell up inside me and I'm drowning. My head all dark inside. Feel like giant river I never cross in front me now. Ms Rain say, You not writing Precious. I say I drownin' in river. She don't look me like I'm crazy but say, If you just sit there the river gonna rise up drown you! Writing could be the boat to carry you to the other side. ~ Sapphire.

Peacefully ensconced in a small house on the outskirts of somewhere or other, enjoying a tranquillity in which I won't write the works I don't write now, and to keep on not writing them I'll come up with even better excuses than the ones I use today to elude myself. ~ Fernando Pessoa

What's hard, in hacking as in fiction, is not writing, it's deciding what to write. ~ Neal Stephenson

I started being me about the songs, not writing objectively, but subjectively. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work. ~ John Lennon

I write the script; nobody sees it, not the people that put the money in the picture. I cast who I want, and make the film. That's why I've always felt the only thing standing between me and greatness, is me. There's no excuse for me not to be great except that I'm not. ~ Woody Allen

I'm not writing a book of Western history,' I tell him. 'I've written enough history books to know this isn't one. I'm writing about something else. A marriage, I guess. Deadwood was just a blank space in the marriage. Why waste time on it?'
Rodman is surprised. So am I, actually - I have never formulated precisely what it is I have been doing, but the minute I say it I know I have said it right. What interests me in all these papers is not Susan Burling Ward, the novelist and illustrator, and not Oliver Ward the engineer, and not the West they spend their lives in. What really interests me is how two such unlike particles clung together, and under what strains, rolling downhill into their future until they reached the angle of repose where I knew them. That's where the interest is. That's where the meaning will be if I find any. ~ Wallace Stegner

I never quite know when I'm not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, "Dammit, Thurber, stop writing." She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. ~ James Thurber

If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not. ~ Anthony Burgess

People can be cruel,' he says with a sympathetic look that makes me trust him even more. And right then I realize that he is not writing down all my words in a file, which I really appreciate, let me tell you. ~ Matthew Quick

Not writing is as important as writing - go out into the world and remember how interesting it, and the people in it, are. ~ Veronica Roth

I think that's a really important role that people sometimes forget about, especially with all these newspaper shutting down and having trouble, where are all these stories going to go? I think you have something really great with all those stories waiting to be told, but I just don't know how it shapes up exactly. I don't think there are going to be a lot of newspaper reporters sitting around not writing. ~ Biz Stone

Good thing you're not writing the press release. ~ Adam Schiff

The writing life is a secret life, wither we admit it or not. ~ Jayne Anne Phillips

So one can lose a good idea
by not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other asides
it knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiations
are terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and does
recognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier. ~ John Ashbery

Bringing a novel to light - revealing the form and cadence, shadows and demeanor of a protagonist constructed from thin air - linking scenes and synchronicity across translucent time - holding up a glass brimming with chilled, never-tasted liquid, then sipping from it with intoxicated focus - allowing lovers to make a perilous mess of things, fall apart and nakedly come back together again - looking through conjured windows deep into someone else's snow-bound solitude, feeling utterly alone yet being all-connected: this is not writing. It's world-creating.

It's raw, exposed dreaming. It's humbling. At first too personal and intimate to share, it evolves like a child into a life of its own until I have no say in what comes next.

It's what I wake at 4am to say Yes to, the spinning possibility of a new story relentlessly commanding me to write it down so it can whirl in your experience. ~ Laurie Perez

if you are satisfied with your first draft you are not writing, you are excreting ~ Jennifer Ross

The only thing worse than writing is not writing. ~ Buffy Cram

I've seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Californication, and far as I can tell the coolest thing about writing is all the stuff you do when you're not writing. ~ The Gang

I think I would spend the first 30 weeks not writing, just clearing my head and seeing parts of the world I haven't seen and going back to places I have seen and love. ~ Michael Connelly

Just because you boys are willing to work off the books doesn't mean that I am," Suzy rasped. "First time one of you did that, I ended up in a Union detention center. And now getting mauled by a creepy little demon? No. I'm not writing up the justification for this. If you don't like it, then you can suck my giant monster dick." "Monster dick?" Fritz echoed dryly. "Well, isn't today full of revelations? ~ S.M. Reine

The first writing of the human being was drawing, not writing. ~ Marjane Satrapi

Whenever I'm not writing, time trudges forward with the maddening, mortifying, miserable, morose, moribund pace of a funeral procession. ~ Cat Winters

I feel terribly vulnerable and 'not-myself' when I'm not writing ... ~ Sylvia Plath

My new book is going well. It's practically writing itself! Actually, what I mean is I'm not writing it, my clone is. ~ Jarod Kintz

Capote's rejoinder to Kerouac's assertion that he never needed to edit his work ... But, that's not writing . That's typing. ~ Truman Capote

Writing is hard. Not as hard as not writing.

Not writing is torturous, bloody, chaotic and a gruesome winless battle.

A writer who writes, knows peace, lives connected to truth.

Not writing is ache, betrayal, death of the soul and imagination. ~ Coco J. Ginger

Anxiety is not only an inevitable part of the writing process but a necessary part. If you're not scared, you're not writing. ~ Ralph Keyes

One reason for not writing a lost-in-the-funhouse story is that either everybody's felt what Ambrose feels, in which case it goes without saying, or else no normal person feels such things, in which case Ambrose is a freak. ~ John Barth

I feel unsettled at any time when I'm not writing. And I mean that. There's a sense of peace, and of being in the right place, that I experience only when I'm writing. ~ Gretchen Rubin

Shakespeare is not writing Christian fantasy but Christian realism, and this entails martyrdom and suffering on the part of the innocent. This is the real world in which Shakespeare found himself. ~ William Shakespeare

E-mail creates the illusion that you're writing. You're not. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts. ~ Aaron Sorkin

But listen: The weight of the camera reminds me to see. It helps me decide against deciding that my world is overly familiar, already known. I look for cracks and fissures, for the new or newly announced. I look for water to run a different color in the stream, or for the sun to strike the pond in winter with delirious force. If I can't see, then I don't know, and if I don't know, I'm not writing, and while some may question the value of words, or of memoir in particular, I will again make this claim: Words rendered true spook and spur us. They expect of us. They expect for us. Photographs do the same thing: "Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees," said Paul Strand. ~ Beth Kephart

I write because I can't imagine not writing. ~ Richard Price

I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good at it. ~ Anne Lamott

When I'm writing I can write anywhere; when I'm not writing I can't write anywhere. ~ Meg Rosoff

Here's the truth: You won't find your voice over time. I don't believe that writers arrive at this strange destination called "their voice." I think a strong voice evolves over time. But none of that happens without writing. You're not writing for writing's sake. You're writing to exercise your critical thinking skills. When you do that often enough, great writing will start to flow. ~ Mitch Joel

I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish. ~ Donald Ray Pollock

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments - moments of sustained creation - when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on. ~ E.B. White

see who got caught. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them young. When she's not writing, Carolyn likes to sit in her gorgeous backyard with her cats, Chester Fat Boy and Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw, and watch them protect their territory from crickets, locusts, and spiders. ~ Carolyn Brown

That's not writing, that's typing. ~ Truman Capote

'Writing' always means 'not writing' to me because I will do anything to put it off. I think this is mainly because writing anything down and then handing it over to a third party - especially in comedy - is such an exposing act that you naturally want to delay the process. ~ Catherine Tate

Actually, I can't remember when I was not writing. ~ Gore Vidal

I am not writing to try and convert people to fundamental Christianity. I am just trying to share my experience, strength and hope, that someone who is as messed up and neurotic and scarred and scared can be fully accepted by our dear Lord, no questions asked. ~ Anne Lamott

You're not writing a biography?" Mike now asked. "Oh no. The opposite. A counterbiography, as it were. I don't think you find someone by going to where he lived, least of all someone as shifting and undomesticated as Greene. I'm interested in the things that lived inside him. His terrors and obsessions. Not the life, as it were, but what it touched off in the rest of us. ~ Pico Iyer

I am not writing for scholars or fellow critics, but for people who like to read, to look at pictures, and to know things. ~ Guy Davenport

Writing's not always a pleasure to me, but if I'm not writing every other pleasure loses its savour. ~ John Braine

The Journal is not essentially a confession, a story about oneself. It is a Memorial. What does the writer have to remember? Himself, who he is when he is not writing, when he is living his daily life, when he is alive and real, and not dying and without truth. ~ Maurice Blanchot

When I'm not writing, I read loads of fiction, but I've been writing quite constantly lately so I've been reading a lot of nonfiction - philosophy, religion, science, history, social or cultural studies. ~ Irvine Welsh

If I'm not writing about myself, then I sit down with people I really dig writing with and throw 'em out and see if something sticks. Their brain plus mine hopefully will make something interesting and cool and it will just snowball and we'll have a unique song by the end of it. ~ Kacey Musgraves

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult. ~ Adam Mansbach

If I don't have time for the writing, it's because I'm not making that time. It's really just a question of whether you want to or not, whether you feel you deserve to write or not. ~ David Whyte

If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me. ~ Austin Carlile

In my case, the long gaps between my books have got quite a lot to do with lack of confidence. A lot of the time when I'm not writing I start thinking I can't do it. ~ Wendy Cope

Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter. ~ Garrison Keillor

I can write anywhere… Or not, as the case may be, which is not the case. ~ Hank Moody

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all. ~ Noah Baumbach

I'll be living quietly in a house somewhere in the suburbs, enjoying a peaceful existence not writing the book I'm not writing now and, so as to continue not doing so, I will come up with different excuses from the ones I use now to avoid actually confronting myself. Or else I'll be interned in a poorhouse, content with my utter failure, mingling with the riffraff who believed they were geniuses when in fact they were just beggars with dreams, mixing with the anonymous mass of people who had neither the strength to triumph nor the power to turn their defeats into victories. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Writers talk about the agony of writing; I talk about the agony of not writing. ~ Laura Z. Hobson

I'm not writing just classic-sounding songs, but songs that come from experience. ~ Leon Bridges

It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing any poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless - abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the idea of being a prophet with honor and dignity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mindYou really have to make a resolution to write for yourself, in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what your self is saying. ~ Allen Ginsberg

And here it is worth while remembering, since we are discussing Not Writing for Children, that neither the Sleeping Beauty nor Rumpelstiltzkin was really written for children. In fact, none of the fundamental fairy stories was ever written at all. They all arose spontaneously from the folk and were transmitted orally from generation to generation to unlettered listeners of all ages. ~ P.L. Travers

So I made an outline. Well, you know, days are going by, and I am not writing anything because this thing is laid out in front of me. It's as if you get every brochure for a trip you are going to go on and you get the minutest details of every step along the way. Well, I really doubt you're going to then get in the car and go. You know, it's like, why bother if it's all laid out in front of you? ~ Steve Tesich

I always knew I was going to grow up to be a storyteller; that's one of the earliest things I remember about myself. There was never a question of me not writing. ~ Regina Doman