The Writing Process Quotes

My books are based on the "what if" principle. "What if you became invisible?" or "What if you did change into your mother for one day?" I then take it from there. Each book takes several months in the long process of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, and each has its own set of problems. The one thing I dislike about the writing process is the sometimes-loneliness of it all. Readers only get to see the glamour part of a bound book, not some of the agonizing moments one has while constructing it. ~ Mary Rodgers

When I write, I don't allow the fear of consequences to interfere with the writing process. I have in the past paid for my commitment to the truth and the way I live my life. I am prepared to pay more if I have to. ~ Taslima Nasrin

Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quality of discovery. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race. ~ William Zinsser

The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning. ~ A. B. Yehoshua

The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everyone else, you have to want to write better than everyone else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen--editors, agents, and publishers--whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards are not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best. ~ William Zinsser

And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it. ~ Jason Bateman

In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful ... You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. ~ Doris Lessing

Each time I discovered a potential link between one character's story and another's, several more connections would reveal themselves, like a beautiful, complex web spinning itself. ~ Richard Scarsbrook

Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there's just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside. ~ Marie Rutkoski

I can pretty much spend an entire week talking about how the writing process works, to be honest! It can really vary from project to project and is often dependent on when you're brought on board, the genre, the platform and the narrative desires of the project. ~ Rhianna Pratchett

[Henry Miller] was such a scribomaniac that even when he lived in the same house as Lawrence Durrell they often exchanged letters. For most of his life, Henry wrote literally dozens of letters a day to people he could have easily engaged in conversation - and did. The writing process, in short, was essential. As it is to all real writers, writing was life and breath to him. He put out words as a tree puts out leaves. ~ Erica Jong

The live show allows me to transcend myself, because it's not about me anymore. The writing process is very much about me but then the live show is not. They feel really different. ~ Fernando Torres

The writing process isn't something I'm in love with. I'm an illustrator who writes. ~ Chris Riddell

Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

I started to enjoy the writing process itself, to remember how it felt to create worlds different to mine, to spend time thinking about a story that isn't my own. ~ Josie Silver

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better. ~ Doris Lessing

In 'Snow White and the Hunstman,' when we see them in the Dark Forest, you're allowed a lot of freedom to be able to cutaway to, for instance, the prince. That B and C story stuff helps the writing process, even though it makes it a more complicated movie. ~ Evan Daugherty

Teach your students real-world writing purposes, add a teacher who models his or her struggles with the writing process, throw in lots of real-world mentor texts for students to emulate, and give our kids the time necessary to enable them to stretch as writers. ~ Kelly Gallagher

There is nothing more valuable in the writing process than a friend to hold you accountable to your own potential. ~ J.R. Young

The writing process for a short story feels more like field geology, where you keep turning the thing over and over, noting its qualities in detail, hammering at it, putting it near flame, pouring different acids on it, and then finally you figure out what it is, or you just give up and mount it on a ring and have an awkward chunky piece of jewelry that seems weirdly dominating but that you for some reason like. I could be wrong about field geology here. ~ Rivka Galchen

If we were truly in the studio making a record, it would have been more time consuming, and certainly I would have been more involved in the writing process. ~ Taylor Dayne

When I return to the writing process after being away from it for a while, the first part of it always is being honest with myself: What am I into right now? Is it rock bands and guitars, is it noise, is it dance beats and electronics? Is it space, is it clutter? ~ Trent Reznor

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

There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk. ~ Anne Lamott

To make the writing process easier for you, do more research. The more information you have about the topic you chose to write about, the more effective, easier and practical writing experience you will have, and the better reading material readers will get. ~ Noora Ahmed Alsuwaidi

The writing process is very much like being in a dark tunnel, and you don't really know what you will end up with until you have created it. ~ Emily Haines

I have had quite a lot of prizes, but I don't think it makes any difference to the ease or difficulty to the writing process. ~ Ruth Rendell

I'd love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television. ~ Denis Leary

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'. ~ Eminem

The first splurge of creativity is kind of free, and the last 30 percent is painstakingly hard work, but it's good to light a fire and make it public and create that expectation. It's become part of the writing process, really, a way to ask the audience what they think, how they think it's going. I can't write songs in a vacuum. ~ Andrew Bird

During the writing process you're going to discover things about yourself you never knew. For example, if you're writing about something that happened to you, you may re-experience some old feelings and emotions. You may get 'wacky' and irritable and live each day as if you were on an emotional roller coaster. Don't worry. Just keep writing. ~ Syd Field

For me, the writing process is the same as the reading process. I want to know what happens next. ~ Neal Asher

Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you. ~ Charles Ghigna

During the writing process, I tend not to listen to too much music. I obviously wear a lot of influences on my sleeve, but if I was listening to too many records, I would turn into too much of a monkey. ~ Jay Reatard

I love, love writing about Los Angeles. I love exploring every part of it. And I find, rather than a burden, it's actually one of the most enjoyable parts of the writing process for me. I love everything about L.A. Okay, not the traffic. But I love the way it looks. I love the geography. I love the diversity. ~ Robert Crais

I was definitely looking for a reason to impose rules in the story during the writing process ... a set of reasons that you could graph for why it's not chaos and anarchy - for why it has to be order, and why you need architects and an architectural brain to create the world of the dream for the subject to enter. ~ Jonathan Nolan

I think about Rilke, who said that it's the questions that move us, not the answers. As a writer I believe it is our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustices that we see and to create a prayer of beauty. The questions serve us in that capacity. Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.

... I write out of my questions. Hopefully, if we write out of our humanity, our vulnerable nature, then some chord is struck with a reader and we touch on the page. I know that is why I read, to find those parts of myself in a story that I cannot turn away from. The writers who move me are the ones who create beauty and truth out of their sufferings, their yearnings, their discoveries. It is what I call the patience of words born out of the search.

... Perhaps as writers we are really storytellers, finding that golden thread that connects us to the past, present, and future at once. I love language and landscape. For me, writing is the correspondence between these two passions. It is difficult to ever see yourself. I don't know how I've developed or grown as a writer. I hope I am continuing to take risks on the page. I hope I am continuing to ask the hard questions of myself. If we are attentive to the world and to those around us, I believe we will be attentive on the page. Writing is about presen ~ Terry Tempest Williams

time. Take a lot of it at the beginning of the writing process. I'm not talking about hours or even days. I'm talking about weeks. Don't make the amateurish mistake of getting a hot premise and immediately running off to write scenes. You'll get twenty to thirty pages into the story and run into a dead end you can't escape. ~ John Truby

Knowing what thought process goes into constructing a line helps an actor know how to deliver that line because you understand the intention behind the writing. ~ David Henrie

the writing process behind The Tilted World. ~ Tom Franklin

The writing process for me is pretty much always the same - it's a solitary experience. ~ Sheryl Crow

I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts. ~ Quentin Tarantino

In live-action, writing, production, and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap - happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors, and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely. ~ Michael Arndt

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real. ~ Jeanette Winterson

On the Writing Process:
When in doubt, take it out., ~ Barbara DaCosta

The easiest part of the writing process is whichever part I'm not currently doing. ~ Scott Tracey

Don't write about Man; write about a man. ~ E.B. White

I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay. ~ Quentin Tarantino

The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together. ~ Rebecca Stead

Directing is such a crucial part of the writing process; you start directing and you see what does not work. "Oh, God, what was I thinking?" and then you can rearrange it. ~ Conor McPherson

I have enjoyed writing songs for so long ... it felt like in order to make music that I could relate to myself, I would have to be a part of the writing process. ~ Bridgit Mendler

By the end of the writing process, which is about 80 songs per album, I look at the material and think, what's going to make a difference in someone's life. ~ Jason Mraz

[The Great Gatsby] is a tour de force of revision. So much so that critics, who rarely mention the edit of a book, commented on the quality of Gatsby's rewriting, not just its writing, in reviews. For H. L. Mencken, the novel had 'a careful and brilliant finish. ... There is evidence in every line of hard work and intelligent effort. ... The author wrote, tore up, rewrote, tore up again. There are pages so artfully contrived that one can no more imagine improvising them than one can imagine improvising a fugue.' ... Careful, sound, carefully written, hard effort, wrote and rewrote, artfully contrived not improvised, structure, discipline: all these terms refer, however obliquely, not to the initial act of inspiration, but to editing.
Organization and clarity do not dominate the writing process. At some point, though, a writer must pull coherence from confusion, illuminate what lives in shadow, shade what shines too brightly. Gatsby is the cat's meow case study of crossing what Michael Ondaatje calls 'that seemingly uncrossable gulf between an early draft of a book ... and a finished product' - in other words, editing. ~ Susan Bell

I got a little bit lost in the writing process: like, that moment in the 'Fight Song' music video where I'm throwing the crumpled paper on the bed, that was really true life. I was filling journals with different possibilities of lyrics for the first verse. And none of them felt right. ~ Rachel Platten

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it. ~ Alice Englert

The writing process is like developing a photograph; you never know what will turn out. There's nothing like penning a frame, and giving the story world permission to unfold as I witness the picture come into focus. ~ Paige Crutcher

When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted. ~ Gunter Grass

It's basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes, in fact often, it doesn't and it just runs out of steam. The hope for me is that it will snowball. the best way to put it is that I have no particular method or technique per se, other than this: I plan nothing, I outline nothing, I start with an idea or an image or a line of dialogue and see where it leads me. Because I never know what the next page will contain, let alone the end of the book, I am perpetually surprised by the course that my characters take. The writing process is as full of surprises and twists for me as the reading experience is for my readers. I love the spontaneity of writing this way, the possibilities left open, the feeling that I am not constrained or committed to any given path. Every day, I am surprised by something. It may not be the most efficient way of writing, but it has served me well thus far. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living. ~ Philip Roth

I start casting early in the writing process, so I can tailor the script to the gifts of the actors. ~ Judd Apatow

Actually, I very much dislike routine. Creating music is my chaos therapy. The writing process puts me in a good place. Recording the music is the release of however I felt in the song. ~ Mpho Koaho

My neck is too arthritic to snap around. The big shift in my perspective that happened in the writing process, however, was the paramount importance of the "West" epitomized by Cincinnati. ~ Charles R. Morris

My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you're not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You're actually discovering in the writing process, you're actually creating knowledge. ~ Alan Lightman

Basically, editing is done in rehearsal and in the writing process and in the acting, so it's very, very tricky, very, very tricky. ~ Julie Delpy

When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me. ~ David E. Kelley

All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process. ~ Tom Stoppard

I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

When you're at odds with yourself, it's hard to create. Sometimes the writing process is as easy as opening up the window and letting in the breeze. And sometimes it's like chiseling away at a block of granite with a pencil. ~ Anthony Kiedis

Criminal profiling is the writing process in reverse. Writers create characters and project their actions forwards into a timeline. Profilers are left with the aftermath of an offender's behaviour and must extrapolate backwards to establish their characteristics. ~ Stewart Stafford

I love the writing process. It's something that I'm interested in personally and something I always do on every movie. ~ Olivia Wilde

Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don't like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I'm coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that wont the game. ~ William Zinsser

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.
This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you. ~ Annie Dillard

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process. ~ Sydney Pollack

There is a method to the madness of James Patterson's success. Co-writing with him is a terrific learning experience, particularly in the art of crafting a perfect thriller. The collaboration also gives me an opportunity to access a wider global audience. ~ Ashwin Sanghi

Somewhere in university, I realized that I hadn't been to classes in months, and I'd get tired to the point of narcolepsy doing anything other than some form of performing, directing, writing, or acting. ~ William Shatner

Writing is not hard. Just get paper and pencil, sit down, and write as it occurs to you. The writing is easy-it's the occurring that's hard. ~ Stephen Leacock

That is one more reason why I write in English only right now. I prefer writing in the language I hear around me for the people by whom I am surrounded. ~ Yuriy Tarnawsky

I am convinced more and more day by day that fine writing is next to fine doing, the top thing in the world. ~ John Keats

Books aren't made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids, There's some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it's back-breaking, sweaty, time consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands like that in the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison. ~ Gustave Flaubert

My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work. ~ Ilsa J. Bick

Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue. ~ Ian McEwan

I write to tell stories. I believe that there a some professions in the world that will last forever: doctor or a nurse, teacher, builder and a storyteller. I write also to become myself, more so day by day. Writing is a way to shape out visible and invisible, in myself as well as in the world. ~ Eppu Nuotio

Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic. In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They're not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being; that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment; things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour, while we're waiting to die. ~ Alan Moore

If there's any other message in this to readers, it's in these two characters as icons of hope, that it doesn't make any difference where you come from, or where you went to school, or who you are, there's hope. That a kid from Jersey with Superman as the icon that kept him alive for years would one day end up writing the character is as absoutely unlikely as it is utterly inevitable. And if that's true for me, it's true for you, if you follow your dreams and your passions in full flight.
Don't give up.
No Limits.
It's never too late to learn to fly. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

What you want to do is talk about ideas, you write a novel, you have a lecture about those ideas. Satire and comedy are really the only film mediums where you can get into ideas and have people leave the theater without being moralized. ~ Justin Simien

Look for the little loves. Find and shape the little bitternesses. ~ Ray Bradbury

That afternoon, I tried to understand if I had made a choice about what to write. But instead it seemed to me if anyone had made a choice, the novel had, choosing me like I was a door and walking through me out into the world. ~ Alexander Chee

There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft. ~ Jessamyn West

I've always preferred writing about grey characters and human characters. Whether they are giants or elves or dwarves, or whatever they are, they're still human, and the human heart is still in conflict with the self. ~ George R R Martin

The more you write, the more you're capable of writing. ~ Paul Theroux

[on scene execution] Interesting isn't the point ... storytelling momentum and relevance is. ~ Larry Brooks

No Way Back is my kind of novel - a tough, taut thriller - Mofina knows the world he writes about. ~ Michael Connelly

Are you going to change yet again, shift your position according to the questions that are put to you, and say that the objections are not really directed at the place from which you are speaking? Are you going to declare yet again that you have never been what you have been reproached with being? Are you already preparing the way out that will enable you in your next book to spring up somewhere else and declare as you're now doing: no, no, I'm not where you are lying in wait for me, but over here, laughing at you?'
'What, do you imagine that I would take so much trouble and so much pleasure in writing, do you think that I would keep so persistently to my task, if I were not preparing – with a rather shaky hand – a labyrinth into which I can venture, into which I can move my discourse... in which I can lose myself and appear at last to eyes that I will never have to meet again. I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write. ~ Michel Foucault

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. ~ Brian Kernighan

Obviously this all gets tricky/complicated when your writing reveals so much of your private/intimate life, and the nature of writing on the Internet comes with a lot of focus on your "personal brand." ~ Marie Calloway

Telling our personal story constitutes an act of consciousness that defines the ethical lining of a person's constitution. Recounting personal stories promotes personal growth, spurs the performance of selfless deeds, and in doing so enhances the ability of the equitable eye of humanity to scroll rearward and forward. Every person must become familiar with our communal history of struggle, loss, redemption, and meaningfully contemplate the meaning behind our personal existence in order to draft a proper and prosperous future for succeeding generations. Accordingly, every person is responsible for sharing their story using the language of thought that best expresses their sanguine reminiscences. Without a record of pastimes, we will never know what were, what we now are, or what we might become by steadfastly and honorably struggling with mortal chores. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When I got up this morning the sea was full of sun pennies - and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work one. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minded than I am. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I would like to see us grow in developing a deep understanding of the need for healing as an abolitionist practice. Many of us come to this work with our own wounds--whether from childhood trauma, racism, homophobia, or the violence of police and prisons. In fact, many of us draw energy and inspiration from these wounds and the anger they create. But we are also drained by these traumas. Or find ourselves neglecting our bodies and spirits in the same ways that we may have been neglected in the past. As a result, our movement can be very 'head' oriented--talking, planning, thinking, writing--and not body and emotion oriented. This work doesn't have to be individualistic or separate from movement work; we can include it all in our movement spaces and make it a collective activity, just like the community recovery movement. But a movement against a violent and violating phenomenon like the PIC cannot hope to be successful if we don't directly address and heal the effects of that violence. ~ Julia Sudbury

A word of warning here. The events as you remember them will never be the same in your memory once you have turned them into a memoir. For years I have worried that if I turn all of my life into literature, I won't have any real life left - just stories about it. And it is a realistic concern: it does happen like that. I am no longer sure I remember how it felt to be twenty and living in Spain after my parents died; my book about it stands now between me and my memories. When I try to think about that time, what comes to mind most readily is what I wrote. ~ Judith Barrington