Writing Essentials Quotes

The best thing about being a writer is that 'work' is always something you love, plus usually accompanied by tea, coffee and cakes of some sort. ~ Jamie L. Harding

The pictures feel as essential to me as the text. I was always interested in including pictures with writing. ~ Marie Calloway

Outside of family, writing is essential. To me, it's like breathing. ~ Patricia Reilly Giff

That is my essential reason for writing, not for fame, not to be celebrated after death, but to heighten and create life all around me. I also write because when I am writing I reach the high moment of fusion sought by the mystics, the poets, the lovers, a sense of communion with the universe. ~ Anais Nin

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose. ~ Barbara Tuchman

Good writing is good writing no matter what genre you're writing in, and I believe that there are only a handful of fundamental craft tools that are essential for any genre-including nonfiction. ~ Georgia Heard

Essentials of how to do a startup do not include writing a business plan ~ Steve Blank

Even Jack Kerouac, who famously said, "First thought, best thought," benefited from editing. His earliest works are the most edited, and they're the best of his writing. ~ K.M. Soehnlein

In the end, writing is not a full step toward self-healing, just a tiny, very tentative move in that direction. ~ Haruki Murakami

I have written 20 books, and each one is like having a baby. Writing is not easy; some people want to write books but just can't put a story together. I can put together a story that interests both me and my readers. ~ Jackie Collins

Language always occurs in a context - you can speak Elizabethan words, but to speak the language you have to put on the mindset ... ~ John Geddes

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

It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. That's why writing on the Internet has become a life-saver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression. ~ Roger Ebert

I don't know why the publishers in New York don't take a tip from Hollywood and just publish the outlines of novels rather than the completed books. Let the audience use their imaginations, as my Maw always says about radio. I would much prefer to read an outline of War and Peace than slog through eight hundred thousand words. Why do I need Tolstoy to describe snow? I can imagine snow, whether Russian snow or just regular snow. But book publishers seem to think that the authors should do all the work, and the readers should be waited on hand-and-foot like a buncha goddamn prima donnas. ~ Gary Reilly

Dreams are fuel for creation. ~ Joseph Hunt

Apparently "London" gave out my address! that's what they're saying ... not just London, though! Brazzaville, too! ... and said that I'm a dirty pornographer ... a letch besides being the most despicable traitor of the century! ... I'd make a urinal blush! that what we need is to cleanse France and the French language of this smut-writing, demoralizing, grammaclast who's sullying our sacred homeland and its literary heritage! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Perhaps reading and writing books is one of the last defences human dignity has left, because in the end they remind us of what God once reminded us before He too evaporated in this age of relentless humiliations - that we are more than ourselves; that we have souls. ~ Richard Flanagan

All the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there. ~ V.S. Naipaul

There's nothing worse than writing. There's nothing better than writing. It's like the man you hate to love, love to hate and never really come to terms with any of the feelings. ~ Coco J. Ginger

An opportunity lost may have motivated us to find a satisfying alternative. Adversity or suffering may have taught us certain important skills. Some writers have felt new appreciation for their lives after surviving a serious illness or disability. A fortunate outcome does not invalidate the unfortunate aspect. ~ Nan Merrick Phifer

To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don't have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be. ~ John Braine

Advertising, Marketing, PR can get more people to buy your book. Only great writing can get more people to love it. ~ Ashok K. Banker

You have to write. You have to sit down and do it every day. Find your method, your motivation, your tenacity to keep doing it even when you can no longer explain why you would even try. ~ Catherine Cruzan

There are two kinds of people in boxing. Those who say, 'Oh, boy; Tom Hauser is writing an article about me,' and those who say, 'Big problem; Tom Hauser is writing an article about me.' ~ Jim Lampley

This is why people like writing. You visit old friends without having to go on Facebook and see what they're up to and deal with what idiots called FOMO. You make them into what you want them to be, the people they could be if only they were braver, smarter. ~ Caroline Kepnes

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

What I've learned about writing is that sometimes less is more, while often more is grander. And both are true. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Against all expectations, the symptoms of Van Gogh's mental illness are conspicuous by their almost complete absence from his letters. Much as he chose not to paint before he had fully recovered from one of his attacks, so he refrained from writing at times of crisis. Throughout his life, admittedly, his letters bear witness to a man possessed, frequently agitated, enraged, dejected, obsessed, but never deranged, or emotionally or intellectually unstable. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Everything I've learned about art was (a) because I was actually interested, or (b) I was actually interested in covering my ass because of what I was writing about. ~ Peter Schjeldahl

I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a foreign language, I'm afraid, but I loved Flaubert. I loved the 19th-century classics. I love Thomas Hardy. I wanted to be a goof on a bus, but I wanted to write more. ~ Robert Stone

The more a man writes, the more he can write. ~ William Hazlitt

The people I've known who wanted to become writers, knowing what it meant, did become writers. ~ John Gardner

The three essentials for great preaching are: truth, clarity, and passion. ~ G. Campbell Morgan

Good writing is always a breaking of the soil, clearing away prejudices, pulling up of sour weeds of crooked thinking, stripping the turf so as to get at what is fertile beneath. It would be amusing to carry the simile further. Those bulbs that flower in the sand and wither! The gay fiction annual that has to be planted again every year! Those experimental plants from Russia, France, and Greenwich Village that are always getting winter killed - confound 'em! - is it worth while planting them again? The stocky perennial that keeps coming up and coming up - so easy to grow and so ugly. Scarlet sage that gives a touch of fiery sin to the edge of the suburbanite's concrete walk! And then the good flowers - as honest as they are beautiful! The well-ordered gar den! The climbing rose that escapes and is the most beautiful of all! ~ Henry Seidel Canby

Everybody dies.
Some die still waiting for inspiration. ~ Christina Escamilla

This experience of getting so lost in my writing that I lose track of time, or of anything outside the imagined world, is a release for me. ~ David Ignatius

For writing, I get up early in the morning - 5 o'clock, 4:30. I'm a morning person ... So I try to do it while people are asleep. The mornings are the nicest. ~ Patti Scialfa

How could filling in a bunch of blanks and writing a fluffy essay about the 'moment of significance' in my life let them know if I was good enough to go here? ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Isn't it odd, the attractiveness of type and paper and ink, bodying thoughts and descriptions? Isn't it odd how much the sight can teach us about writing? Commas really look like commas in print. ~ Shelby Foote

Writing is successful schizophrenia because I'm paid to hear voices in my head. ~ Jodi Picoult

I do so much writing. But so much of it never goes anywhere, never sees any light of day. I suppose that's like gardening in the basement. I don't publish so much of what I write. I just seem to plow it back into the soil of what I write after it, rewriting and rewriting, thinking that somehow it gets better after the fifty-second-time around. I need to learn to abandon my writing. To let go of it. Dispose of it, like tissue. ~ J.R. Tompkins

I find research fascinating and always conduct some before I begin writing, and then fill in the rest as needed. I read stacks of books and also had the opportunity to travel to England to do more research. ~ Julie Klassen

When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that's in color. These words in color are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. If you like, we give them a third dimension. ~ Jacques Brel

Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about critics. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

The thing that I'm most in love with is the thing that I'm writing at the moment. ~ Peter Morgan

Cristina Eisenberg weaves her observations as a scientist and her personal experiences afield into a resonant account about the web of life that links humans to the natural world. Grounded in best science, inspired by her intimate knowledge of the wolves she studies, she offers us a luminous portrait of the ecological relationships that are essential for our well-being in a rapidly changing world. The Wolf's Tooth calls for a conservation vision that involves rewilding the earth and honoring all our relations. ~ Brenda Peterson

I'm less crazy and unhappy when I'm writing. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.' ~ W. H. Auden

The songs I was writing still had lyrics or sentiments that didn't match what I was feeling. It was old, negative energy coming out of me still, but it needed to all get out so I could trash those songs and put them in the bin. And then I was able to let the new songs out. ~ Damien Rice

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history. ~ Edward Rutherfurd

I love whimsy. My mother was a word person, a real quipster. She was famous in the 1950s for being a contester in Utah: 25 words or less. My bicycle, our hi-fi ... in 1959, she won $15,000 from Remington-Rand for writing about a shaver. She was a farm girl from South Dakota. ~ Ron Carlson

People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed. ~ Gina Prince-Bythewood

< Your kid sister's a fan? >
< When she found out you were here, she bugged me non-stop to get your autograph. So annoying. >
He smirked at that, then flipped to a clean page and writing, then ripping off the corner and handing it to me.
< Hey, Andi.
Your brother is the best nurse ever. Thanks for
letting me borrow him.
XOXO,
Your #1 fan,
Harrison Paine >
I stared at it, the world's most idiotic grin spreading over my face. I ran my thumb over his signature - his full signature this time. Andi could pry this scrap of paper out of my cold, dead hand.
< This is really cool. Thanks. >
< Anytime. > ~ Peter Styles

Perfection should generally be avoided in a character. Real people, such as your readers, aren't flawless and chances are they are not going to be able to fully identify with a character who is. ~ Craig Hart