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 you work on a book and you have planned everything out and you are putting flesh to an idea and a surmise that before was mainly bones something funny happens. Your brain goes into an altered state where the words you write are not quite the words you want but rather the words dictated by the task at hand. ~ David Amerland

With poetry and writing, the question isn't "do you know the right words?".
The real question is, "can you make words from the unwordable, chisel blocks of raw silence into shapes and touch our souls? ~ Jacob Nordby

Never use the passive voice. Do not say, 'It will get done.' Say, 'I'll do it,' and then stick to a solid, unwavering deadline ~ Gina Barreca

There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo. ~ Alan Watt

Sometimes I scare myself at how easily I slip inside my mind and live vicariously through these characters. ~ Teresa Mummert

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

The answer is not in the damn blank page - it's in the days or years before and you have to dredge it up - exhume the past again ... ~ John Geddes

It had taken four months to write and she had felt something stir in her as she worked that she had thought was long dead. ~ Rebekah Frumkin

Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together. ~ Darlene Craviotto

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

My mood, as I identify with each of my heroes, resembles what I used to feel when I played alone as a child. Like all children, I liked to play make-believe, to put myself in someone else's place and imagine dream worlds in which I was a soldier, a famous soccer player, or a great hero. ~ Orhan Pamuk

It was a dark and stormy night. . .perfect for staying indoors and writing a novel! ~ Z

Write what you want to write. That's the only advice a writer will ever need. ~ Chloe Thurlow

Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blook. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! ~ Hilary Mantel

Sometimes the title IS the story, and the rest is just an explanation. ~ James K. Bowers

Only my characters truly know what's going on - I just hold the pen. ~ Sandra J. Jackson

Don't over edit. Don't second-guess yourself, or your ideas. Just write. Write every day, and keep at it. Don't get discouraged with the rejections. Tape them up on your office wall, to remind you of all the hard work you put in when you finally start getting published! It's all about persistence and passion. And have fun with it. Don't forget to have fun. ~ Heather Grace Stewart

Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled with leather novels and chai tea. ~ Amy Poehler

There's nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself. Professor Piper ~ Rainbow Rowell

To find the courage to keep writing after constant failure is awesomeness. Winning is eminent. ~ Sereda Aleta Dailey

The Page awaits the Inspiration even as Inspiration roams the world of man, seeking a Page upon which to unfurl itself, body and soul, bare yet clothed in immortality if not immediacy.
And the gods said, "Let there be a Page, and many a Page," and there was a Book. And we saw that the Book was good. ~ Chila Woychik

There's an analogy I came up with once for an interviewer who asked me how much of my material was autobiographical," Octavia says. "I said that the life experience of a fiction writer is like butter in cookie dough: it's a crucial part of flavor and texture - you certainly couldn't leave it out - but if you've done it right, it can't be discerned as a separate element. There shouldn't be a place that anyone can point to and say, There--she's talking about her miscarriage, or Look--he wrote that because his wife had an affair ~ Carolyn Parkhurst

Authors do not need to offer us the answers to such weighty questions such as how to live and prepare us to accept death. The aim of a writer's is to frame worldly questions that allow all readers too independently and jointly explore life-altering questions in a way that satisfies the fabric of thought corresponding to our respective times. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A writer writes. There are no exceptions to this reality. No excuses. Stop wasting time talking about your stories and get them on paper. ~ Christy Hall

In writing I am seduced by the sound of words and by the interaction of their sound and sense. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

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

Usually naive interviewers hover between two mutually contradictory convictions: one, that a text we call creative develops almost instantaneously in the mystic heat of inspirational raptus; or the other, that the writer has followed a recipe, a kind of secret set of rules that they would like to see revealed.
There is no set of rules, or, rather, there are many, varied and flexible rules ... ~ Umberto Eco

And I've learned to hit the brakes at these kinds of stop signs rather than t-boning a tanker truck filled with 200 proof mediocrity. ~ Benjamin Kane Ethridge

In the space of solitude, a writer attempts to remember how they became whom they are but nobody's memory is up to this demanding task. No matter how much a person harrows the fertile lanes of memory, some memories are lost by the passage of time, psychological defense mechanisms screen other memories from detection, the ephemeral character of other memories are invariably to elusive to arrest with reciprocal language. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When we make time to write, we can do it anytime, anywhere. ~ Julia Cameron

At first the creative mind submits to its entry into the symbolic register and gets itself structured like everyone else. Then he balks at a fateful moment which becomes a turning point in the history of his mental growth. From the entry into the imaginary order where he acknowledges his ego and then to the symbolic order where he recognizes his place in the society and finally in his de-symbolization or a refusal to obey the Law that is the rules of the world of symbols, a creative genius is born. ~ Anuradha Bhattacharyya

Talking aloud to oneself is usually indicative of a mental malady. Self-talk is also the stock in trade of an essay writer. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The thing I most fear when writing is my paucity of ideas and the thinness of my emotional lining. I audaciously resolve to write about my greatest fears in an effort to transcend what I most despise about myself – intellectual and emotional poverty. Perchance by making use of all my thoughts and matrix of emotions – both positive and negative – I can escape the labyrinth constructed of my terrible ignorance of the world and an appalling lack of self-awareness. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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

I have been sometimes way too attracted by my own villains because in a way they seem to hold the secret to the heart of the narrative. ~ Peter Straub

I started reading my manuscripts out loud, to hear what they sounded like. If the text flows with little effort, then I am satisfied, but if I keep stumbling and stuttering while I read, then I rewrite. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

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

...he told a story about the days when he was a reporter himself and how he had gotten so close to story that he finally couldn't write it...When I stared at something long enough, the lines blurred and I could no longer see it for what it was. One thing became another. ~ Pete Dexter

We humans are the only creatures on the planet capable of articulating worlds which are contrary, even in the most minor way, to reality. Every story, I think, begins there. With a dream. A fantasy. ~ L.M. Halloran

As a writer, the main skill you need is curiosity. As a reader, the main tool you need is open-mindedness. ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

...a thriller's toughest trick: carefully assembling everything we think we know, until it reveals the one thing we didn't see coming. ~ Entertainment Weekly

Today I will find something beautiful.
Delicate pink blossoms on a cherry tree.
The dove resting near the lemon buds.
Sunbeams smiling from sky to earth.
Smiling on me.
"Creating" in BREATHE IN ~ Eileen Granfors

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

The artistic methods of poetry, painting, photography, and writing share certain commonalities of deep composition: spirit, rhythm, thought, and scenery. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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

Sometimes when I prepare to write, I feel the same sensation wash over me as if my toes were curling over the brink of a high cliff, my gaze peering downward into a dark pond, and I anxiously wonder, will the water prove deep enough? Will my words be satisfactory? ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

These scenes, by the way, are not altogether a literary device - a means of summing up and making a knot of innumerable little threads. Innumerable threads were there; still, if I stopped to disentangle, I could collect a number. But whatever the reason may be, I find that scene making is my natural way of marking the past. ~ Virginia Woolf

Writing is the act of finding out what I think. ~ Stephen King

Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right. ~ Amy Joy

An author who rewrites his own work must essentially be two people. One is the free flowing uncritical writer who creates the bulk of the material - the other is the extremely critical editor whose aim it is to make the book as good as it can become. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

So much of a novelist's writing ... takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them. ~ Graham Greene

Dedicating a writing session to someone is like sending a prayer for them out into the world. I will never know if my writing, my dedication to them, my prayer for them made any difference in their lives. But I know it makes a difference in mine. ~ Elizabeth Rusch

Owning something also means owning up to something. It means accepting responsibility, which means, literally, responsibility. When we write about our lives we respond to them. As we respond to them, we are rendered more fluid, more centered, more agile on our own behalf. We are rendered conscious. Each day, each life, is a series of choices, and as we use the lens of writing to view our lives, we see our choices. ~ Julia Cameron

Writing is hard work. Attempting to write a decent story is friggin exhausting! ~ Veronica Purcell

Good writing is rhythm. ~ William Peter Blatty

He who could write so easily, who could spend a thousand words down along his plunging fingers on the green-rubber keyboard of his machine, had stumbled like a first-grader over this single paragraph. A dozen times he had begun it and written into it a naked desperation; a dozen times he had begun it and written into it the frosted mathematics of logic. Finally he'd written out quickly the sentences that kept cropping up in all the versions. Those must be, to whatever censor there was in him, the most acceptable ones. He sealed it without rereading it and went out to mail it. An hour later he despised himself for having sent it. ~ Laura Z. Hobson

If you do improvising, it can sometimes end up being a waste of time. And if you do that, it's more or less based on a writing process. ~ Giovanni Ribisi

Poems must, of course, be written in emotional freedom. Moreover, poems are not language but the content of the language. ~ Mary Oliver

Set fire to cities and nations, to hearts and minds, to the very core of every human spirit. Make sure your words seep into the skin of the reader, leaving trace minerals that sustain the ailing human shell. Make them pay attention. Set fire to the soul. Anything less is an abomination to creation. ~ Susan Marie

If a plot is a novel's skeleton, and characters are the muscle, then theme is its soul. ~ Janice Hardy

A shrink and a patient switching places. Who is REALLY the boss? ~ Mary Papas

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

My writing routine is this: 1) Have a job. I can't do shit if I don't know where the rent is coming from--I tried the thing where you just declare yourself a writer and live on unemployment/savings/the kindness of strangers but that resulted in clinical depression. (interview with Amy Guth, Bigmouth Indeed Strikes Again) ~ Rachel Cline

The trouble is, writing the damn thing is like unscrewing your skull and pouring the contents of your brain into an empty tank. The tank has a shape, more or less - has more or less defined edges, a bottom and sides. But what it mostly has is volume: a hungry space I've somehow got to fill. ~ Mike Carey

Writing, is not a race. Is to distill the soul letter by letter in a slow and delicate process that will take years. ~ J.E. Negrete

We write every day, we fight every day, we think and scheme and dream a little dream every day. manuscripts pile up in the kitchen sink, run-on sentences dangle around our necks. we plant purple prose in our gardens and snip the adverbs only to thread them in our hair. we write with no guarantees, no certainties, no promises of what might come and we do it anyway. this is who we are. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Sometimes writing can take you to such dark places it can be nearly impossible to come back from; a part of you is left there, in the words you've bled onto paper, in the emotions you've let loose upon the page, and eventually, the world. ~ D. Michael Hardy

I do not put in long hours at the keys - or very seldom. Instead, I snatch time. I write in the crannies of my life. ~ Julia Cameron

Simply put: writing is rewriting. ~ Ronald Dane

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

In this book, much is metaphorical, not as it seems. It's written for writing's sake, as if I were to say, "Let me tell you I'm dying." Well of course I am. So are you. ~ Chila Woychik

Literary truth is not the truth of the biographer or the reporter, it's not a police report or a sentence handed down by a court. It's not even the plausibility of a well-constructed narrative. Literary truth is entirely a matter of wording and is directly proportional to the energy that one is able to ­impress on the sentence. And when it works, there is no stereotype or cliché of popular literature that resists it. It reanimates, revives, subjects ­everything to its needs. ~ Elena Ferrante

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

Writing is work with a purpose. Writers all throughout history labored to discover a spiritual and life-affirming means to live and attempted to share their faithful or pessimistic vision with other people. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I come up with an idea and I'll start throwing little suggestions for possible scenes into a folder, but before I seriously sit down to write Word One, they whole outline is finished. Sue me. It works. ~ Dan Alatorre

Inspiration do not come and cannot be found, it has to exist - somewhere, somehow. Do believe that what you are doing is the most important thing in this world, and do believe that your words can be magical. Because I know they can be and I know they are. If you feel that you are lost in your own mind, don't think, just write. Sometimes we have to erase our thoughts and memories to gain enough strength to be able to write down our inner thoughts. If you don't know what it is, if you think it's ridiculous or silly, you're definitely on the right way. Sometimes you will hate your words and sometimes you will love them. This is the fun part of greatness in which the other part definitely will be your devil. Remember; with greatness comes obstacles. ~ Liv-Christine Hoem

For me, the process of writing a novel happens mostly in your head before you actually start writing. ~ Dan Chaon

By writing , people present their lives as fiction and tackle their issues as a craft exercise . By redeeming their protagonist , they find their own redemption . ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, they would give us fewer pictures chequered with vivid contrasts of light and shade; they would seldom elevate their heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture - still seldomer sink them to the depths of despair; for if we rarely taste the fulness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely savour the acrid bitterness of hopeless anguish. ~ Charlotte Bronte

When you know what you want to communicate, ask yourself: Who is my audience and what does he know about the subject? ~ Sandra Lamb

[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

When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose. ~ Samuel Colbran

The last chapter in 'Alice in Worcestershire' is called 'Writing the book'.
I started to write that 'Diary' chapter at the very beginning of the process and followed it through to the end... speaking to the reader.

My decision to do this was because I've often read autobiographies and wondered how the author felt and how it impacted them writing about painful memories that had been locked away in a deep forgotten place.
I wanted to know what was going in their 'present' life while they were writing; about the struggle with sharing their inner secrets and... I'm... inquisitive. (nosy)!

It took me over five years to finish 'Alice in Worcestershire' because sometimes, I was simply too drained to continue. Periodically, I updated the 'Diary' chapter and, thankfully, it's enthusiastically appreciated by readers. ~ Eskay Teel

Writers know all the good reasons for subjecting their work to a sharp trim. Early drafts are notorious for repetition, indirection and overdevelopment of the trivial. ~ Pamela Erens

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

The "if I had time" lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born - without the luxury of time. ~ Julia Cameron

You can do almost anything if you put your mind to it. Be it the perfect murder, robbing a bank or owning your own company. I don't go along with Prince Charles' maxim that everyone should know their place and limitations. ~ Stephen Richards

And now, I have another good reason to speed up my baby narratives to make my author's profile appear more respectable. ~ Armineonila M.

Writing is like gardening. Planting, watering, and weeding are not enough. You have to prune if you want growth. ~ Ron Brackin

You cannot write your character until you know how he or she thinks, until you know what their philosophy is in the world that they occupy. ~ Don Roff

Words are not cubicles for truth telling. Words do not allow us to touch the face of God or define the contours of the soul. Words are imprecise and cannot capture all aspects of reality or replicate all facets of a person's emotional mélange. Language allows for limited explorations of reality and minimal probing of the human mind. I accept that the only possible relation between language and the world is the image displayed in each person's head by the picture invoking ability of language. Select word pictures might accurately portray what I perceive and still be vague, blatantly inaccurate, completely meaningless, misleading, distorted, or incomprehensible in other persons' minds. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Have you ever pondered the miracle of popcorn? It starts out as a tiny, little, compact kernel with magic trapped inside that when agitated, bursts to create something marvelously desirable. It's sort of like those tiny, little thoughts trapped inside an author's head that―in an excited explosion of words―suddenly become a captivating fairy tale! ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

In my first draft every sentence I put down is to advance the story. Each subsequent draft - the 3rd, the 7th, the 27th - is trying to turn each of those sentences into a poem. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves. ~ Darynda Jones

Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you've written. Comedy pushes limits, makes people uncomfortable, and is a natural reaction to the environment. Otherwise, as I said, it is forced. Let it flow and give your characters permission to cross a line or two, but only if you can take the heat afterward. ~ Darynda Jones

Prose, in his experience, calls for many more words than poetry. There is no point in embarking on prose if one lacks confidence that one will be alive the next day to carry on with the task. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Nothing listens as well as a blank page. ~ Shaun Hick

You know you are a writer when characters inside your brain keep demanding, 'This is my story! Now tell it or I will never leave you alone! ~ Christy Hall