Writing Practice Quotes

What writing practice, like Zen practice does is bring you back to the natural state of mind ... The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mannered, congenial. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Practice writing and speaking about what you do. ~ Sanford Biggers

Writing practice brings us back to the uniqueness of our own minds and an acceptance of it. We all have wild dreams, fantasies, and ordinary thoughts. Let us to feel the texture of them and not be afraid of them.Writing is still the wildest thing I know. ~ Natalie Goldberg

It is from the middle class that writers spring, because, it is in the middle class only that the practice of writing is as natural and habitual as hoeing a field or building a house. ~ Virginia Woolf

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing
and reading
is a solitary business. And it's good to know I'm not alone. ~ Shannon Celebi

Pivotal to a happy writing life is a practice of daily personal writing. ~ Julia Cameron

There's more mystical nonsense written about the process of writing than almost anything. Inspiration, genius, "the muse." So I want to lay out one huge, comforting, wonderful fact: the more you write, the better you get at it. Writing is like a forehand or driving a car or playing guitar. Practice makes you better.

That's not to say inspiration and genius don't exist. Not everyone can become Tolstoy through hard work. What it means is that, wherever you start, you can improve. And the way to do it is to write a lot.

I mentioned at the start of this piece that I've published eight books. When I flip through the first one now, I can't believe it ever made it onto shelves. I see so many flaws and problems in it that I'm amazed. The reason is that I've written hundreds of thousands of words between since then. As long as you produce a little something every day, every week, in time, invisibly, you'll get better. Trailing behind every successful writer are a million words that never saw the light of day. Sometimes it takes five million words. The most important piece of writing advice anyone can give or get is simple, and therefore can seem uninteresting, but it's true: just keep writing. ~ Charles Finch

How to avoid cliche at the root of conception? Practice sincerity. If we've come by ... material honestly, through our own personal experience or imagination, we may rightly claim it as our own ... The way to make material your own is to look for it in yourself ... It should be a story that only you can tell, as only you can tell it. ~ Peter Selgin

I read the novel I had been writing for several months with an odd sense that it was the work of a stranger. I usually work in the dead hours of night and surprising the manuscript mid-morning revealed the flaws and excesses it was trying to conceal. ~ Chloe Thurlow

I do teach fiction and non-fiction, and usually I'm interested in works that confuse genre, but I'm very new to teaching creative writing, I don't have an MFA, or a PhD, I tend to approach it just through my own practice. ~ Kate Zambreno

THE BASIC UNIT of writing practice is the timed exercise. ~ Natalie Goldberg

If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. ~ Ann Patchett

I wrote in coffee shops in Japan when I was 22, 23, before I had the stamina to sit down and write. I liked the buzzy environment; I couldn't speak Japanese when I arrived, so it was kind of a white noise. It felt more sociable than being alone, but now, as I've developed a writing practice, I couldn't do it. ~ Susan Barker

It is very important to be reading as well as writing. A doctor is not going to ignore new surgery practices. ~ Brandon Sanderson

In writing practice, there's no direction. You enter your own mind and follow it where it takes you. We have a great need to connect with our own mind and our own true self. And all of us have a story to tell. ~ Natalie Goldberg

For me, practice isn't doing scales but doing things like writing, jamming with other people, or playing gigs. ~ Tommy Bolin

Writing is a skill, not a talent, and this difference is important because a skill can be improved by practice. ~ Robert Stacy McCain

Journaling has become one of the most gratifying and fulfilling practices of my life. Not only do I derive the daily benefits of consciously directing my thoughts and putting them in writing, but even more powerful are those I have gained from reviewing my journals. ~ Hal Elrod

This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Some days you don't want to run and you resist every step of the three miles, but you do it anyway. You practice whether you want to or not. You don't wait around for inspiration and a deep desire to run ... That's how writing is too ... One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body; to grow patient and nonaggressive. ~ Natalie Goldberg

I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations ... I t is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian. ~ Martin Luther

Never write about a place until you're away from it, because it gives you perspective. Immediately after you've seen something you can give a photographic description of it and make it accurate. That's good practice, but it isn't creative writing. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others ~ Samuel Johnson

Just as you can practice three - word sentences or sentences that travel across time zones, so can you practice writing sentences that breathe unshakable conviction. ~ Stanley Fish

Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time. ~ Kathryn Bigelow

Writing is not, alas, like riding a bicycle: it does not get easier with practice. ~ Nancy Mairs

It's good to go off and write a novel, but don't stop doing writing practice. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Read. Write. Read some more. Explore the universe through your writing. Practice and learn what moves you and what doesn't. ~ Darynda Jones

I am always urging my students to honor their writing practice, to set up a schedule. ~ Tayari Jones

Compartmentalization of occupations and interests bring about a separation of that mode of activity commonly called 'practice' from insight; of imagination from executive 'doing.' Each of these activities is then assigned its own place in which it must abide. Those who write the anatomy of experience then suppose that these divisions inhere in the very constitution of human nature. ~ John Dewey

Making promises to myself, in my personal writing practice, has been important to me all my life. In practical application it is so much easier for me to make promises to others, and keep them, than it is to make promises to myself. "Why is that?" and the answer I gave myself is that in making promises to others I create a model of accountability and reinforcement. I duplicate that in my writing and have grown increasingly better at making and keeping promises to myself. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

The more practice you have, the less stressful writing is. ~ Edwidge Danticat

Writing fiction, like reading fiction, is a practice in empathy. ~ Jennifer Haigh

Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life. ~ Natalie Goldberg

I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Writing is like a sport. If you don't practice, you don't get any better. ~ Rick Riordan

George Smith shows how many of the prophet's followers embraced plural marriage during a period when the LDS Church was emphatically denying the practice ... [and he tells this in] a lucid writing style. ~ Daniel Walker Howe

You know, I always say musicians, they can do it on their own. They can practice their violin on their own. A painter can paint by himself. A writer can write by himself. But an actor needs a group, and the hardest thing about expanding your ability and your craft is to have a group to do it with that is of a caliber where you can grow even more. ~ Anne Archer

The discourse on the Text should itself be nothing other than text, research, textual activity, since the Text is that social space which leaves no language safe, outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in position as judge, master, analyst, confessor, decoder. The theory of the Text can coincide only with a practice of writing. ~ Roland Barthes

You do what you were made to do. Some of us were made to read and write. Thanks be to God. ~ Nancy M. Malone

The way I dance is by writing. ~ Anne Lamott

I write characters that are based on elements of people I know and experiences I've really had. ~ Aziz Ansari

I'm always writing ideas down and then I stick em in my pocket and put em in that folder so I don't lose them. Like, somebody might say something, and I'll go, oh that's a good line, and that goes in the folder, too. It's kind of an ongoing process for me. ~ Lucinda Williams

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

Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush's dog getting a book deal. ~ Timothy Egan

Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping. ~ Nhat Hanh

We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent wasa youthful effervescence which we have now lost. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Persecution mania is still around. In your writing, in your exchanges with people, meeting people who are in Russian affairs, Russian literature, etcetera. ~ Joseph Brodsky

Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing. ~ William Faulkner

It is quite unlawful to demand, defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing or worship, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man. ~ Pope Leo XIII

Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people. ~ Annie Ernaux

Sometimes the writing flows, sometimes it's like wading through concrete. But I keep showing up each day, whether the Muse joins me or not. ~ Bruce Hale

Writers are always anxious, always on the run
from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world. ~ Edna O'Brien

The only problem that occurs in the practice of tantra is when you don't practice tantra and fool yourself. You get caught up in powerful vortexes of negative energy which pull you into the lower bardo regions ... into the mud. ~ Frederick Lenz

I can't write, I am not a writer, you say. Remember no one has ever become a writer without actually writing ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Practice kindness - particularly when you feel irritated or things are not going well. Kindness hardly ever goes wrong. ~ Lewis Richmond

Do-gooders are easily overlooked. We're supposed to be soft, touchy-feely types, who wear Birkenstocks, compost everything, and write poetry by candlelight. ~ Nancy Lublin

All of us have an aura, a body of energy linked to different planes of awareness. Some have the ability to access more planes of awareness then others because of past lives, because of practice in this life. ~ Frederick Lenz

Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid. ~ Henry Watson Fowler

I got nominated for an Academy Award(R) for writing 'Borat.' ~ Todd Phillips

I write pretty much every day, but I don't have any desire to publish anything. ~ Winona Ryder

Adults have an amazing capacity to suck the joy out of such noble pursuits as Reading and Writing until they resemble their favorite pastimes: Working and Suffering. ~ P.J. Bracegirdle

What I'm trying to do right now is truly answer my most deepest most unarticulated questions for myself through my writing in some form. ~ Karan Bajaj

Write regularly, whether you feel like writing or not, and whether you think what you're writing is any good or not. ~ Anne Lamott

A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness. ~ Francois Mauriac

What a writer does is to try to make sense of life. I think that's what writing is, I think that's what painting is. It's seeking that thread of order and logic in the disorder, and the incredible waste and marvelous profligate character of life. What all artists are trying to do is to make sense of life. ~ Nadine Gordimer

It is time to recognize conventional MBA programs for what they are - or else to close them down. They are specialized training in the functions of business, not general educating in the practice of management. ~ Henry Mintzberg

Statements make sense for somebody who needs advice. I'm not giving advice. I don't instruct. At my best, I delight. That's my job. ~ Ron Koertge

There's something, I think, that gets lost when we write something - something gets lost in the translation. So I speak everything out, and it's more important how it sounds. And applying that to more formal aspects of writing. ~ James Frey

I taught English and history, so my education for that really helped prepare me for writing historical fiction. ~ Candace Camp

I have a blog where I keep in touch with my fans. I write about things that are important to me. Sometimes on there I'll just tell a little story about the things that happen in my everyday life. People seem to enjoy them well enough. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

The fact that my students could be in a little college in a little college town on the coast of Rhode Island, and be connecting in other countries with other people, did open them up and empower them and their sense of being. Whether it affected their writing, it's hard to tell. ~ Adam Braver

Heartbreak was the impetus to me writing poems and music in the first place. Over the years, I had my heart broken so badly that if I didn't find a way to get all the pain out, I was going to lose my mind. I was crazy! Like, wanting to slash tires and smash car windows. Crazy! I was so hurt that I had to write. ~ Jill Scott

Every book takes me from 35 to 41 days to write. I don't know why that is. I've tried to get it down to 30 or 31, depending on the length of the month, but it won't work. I don't drink while I'm writing because it fuddles my logical processes, but when I finish a book I go down to the kitchen and pour myself a big belt. ~ Rex Stout

Write not what you wan to say but what you need to say ~ Anonymous

In Canada, I've had success raising money. I think I was fortunate enough. But today, I would have to write a very, very bad script not to be financed for the next one. I'm assured at least of the next one, but you're always [only] as good as your last film. I think it's true for anyone. ~ Philippe Falardeau

A couple people seem to be reticent about the term 'study,' but is there a way to be in the undercommons that isn't intellectual? Is there a way of being intellectual that isn't social? When I think about the way we were using the term 'study,' I think we were committed to the idea that study is what you do with other people. It's talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice. The notion of a rehearsal – being in a kind of workshop, playing in a band, in a jam session, or old men sitting on a porch, or people working together in a factory – there are these various modes of activity. The point of calling it 'study' is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities was already there. These activities aren't ennobled by the fact that we now say, 'oh, if you did these things in a certain way, you could be said to be have been studying.' To do these things is to be involved in a kind of common intellectual practice. What's important is to recognize that that has been the case – because that recognition allows you to access a whole, varied, alternative history of thought. ~ Fred Moten

The writer is often faced with two choices
turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction. ~ Chinua Achebe