Writing Workshops Quotes

My model, such as it is, is a mentorship model, which is to say that I care personally, and I involve myself personally/emotionally with the work of each student, and I try to make it such that they want to reach for more, do better, risk more, try new things, abandon limited objectives, individuate, and so on. For me it is personal, to the best of my ability, and it is about making more of the writer and of the writer's task in each case. I also think it's possible to do this, to teach in this way, in a classroom free of rancor and backbiting and competitive jostling. So: my class should be a place of peace, a place where anything is possible, where the code of realism is in disrepute, and the worst thing you can say, the absolutely verboten thing, is the phrase: The New Yorker. ~ Rick Moody

The writing workshops and programs that are everywhere have encouraged writing. And if that produces more writing, it's also producing more readers of an elevated level. So all in all, a good thing. ~ James Salter

I hate to be a nag, but you have got to read. Like most authors, I run creative writing workshops from time to time, and speak, when invited to writers' circles and at summer schools, and I'm continually amazed at the number of would-be writers who scarcely read. For ideas to germinate and proliferate there has to be fertile ground to sow them in, and for the ground to be fertile it must be mulched with observation, imagination, and other writing. ~ Sarah Harrison

I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions. ~ Kate Zambreno

A random guy I met at a party I went to in high school told me not to study creative writing because in his opinion studying creative writing as a major sucks the love of writing out of you (he was a creative writing major, so he said he would know). I did not want the love of writing sucked out of me, so I followed his advice (however, I did take a few creative writing workshops at IU and I enjoyed them very much). Instead, I had the love of art sucked out of me. Years later I met that guy from the party again in New York City where I moved after college to be an illustrator, and we got married. ~ Meg Cabot

Well, you know, I've been in so many writing workshops, writing classes, and to the right of me and to the left of me, there's always somebody much more talented than I am. And what I figured out is they're not willing to go through the rejection, which is enormous, and then the compromise that comes with, you know, editing your work. And so I decided a long time ago that I didn't have to be 'talented'; I just had to be persistent, and that that was something I could control. The persistence. ~ Kate DiCamillo

I did not go to any creative writing workshop; I did not major in literature. If I can write, anyone can write. All it needs is imagination. ~ Vikas Swarup

Words themselves are all the ghosts we need. ~ Donald Harington

From my 25+ years in publishing, I've observed that selling books does not occur without the author taking action. ~ W. Terry Whalin

If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to. ~ Richard Rohr

Just write, if you open the gate it gets better and better. ~ Dusty Redmon

I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing. ~ Jeff Bowen

I started to write a series of fantasy novels when I was eleven. I have never taken anything artistic as seriously; since then, writing has felt like an attempt to get back there, to my bedroom, my maps, those races and languages and runes. ~ Ken Baumann

There's no reason why you can't say "August Wilson, playwright" even though all of my work, every single play, is about black Americans, about black American culture, about the black experience in America. I write about the black experience of men, or I write about black folks. That's who I am. In the same manner that Chekhov wrote about the Russians, I write about blacks. I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't do anything else. ~ August Wilson

Up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, or waiting for the blood to leave his vessels because if he advances another foot the pain of his love will kill him. ~ Henry Miller

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

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

If guys don't want me to write bad songs about them, they shouldn't do bad things. ~ Taylor Swift

When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story. ~ Stephen King

Why honey, don't you want to get dressed?"
My mother took care never to tell me to do anything. She would only reason with me sweetly, like one intelligent, mature person with another.
It's almost three in the afternoon."
I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't got time to change into this and change into that. ~ Sylvia Plath

It eventually appeared to be me, cinematically. When I was writing it I was actually an author, you know, writing a book ... But there certainly is a difference in energy between a younger man and an older man. ~ Steve Martin

When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere. ~ Mel Brooks

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. ~ John Steinbeck

I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it again. ~ Flannery O'Connor

I didn't write just one book, I wrote twenty books with the same title and published the last one. ~ Josh Steimle

Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, the real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation. ~ Andre Breton

Writing a biography is a delicate - not a reckless - process, where the end result, if done properly, is simply the truth revealed. This delicate and intricate research process has never before been done for Bob Crane, a man with a story worth telling. ~ Carol M. Ford

The novelist in me is probably hiding behind all the stories I write, looking for ways to connect them and continue the conversation with readers. Maybe I'm writing one long narrative, and each book, however different from the last, is just a chapter. ~ Joanna Scott

When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters. ~ Kerry Greenwood

Writing is something you Do and not discuss. Talk is cheap, wishes are free and a fool is included with every purchase. So spend your time wisely. ~ Jaime Reed

Everyone has his own sound. I'm not going to presume how to tell anybody how to write. ~ Elmore Leonard

Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality. ~ Nico Muhly

I'm writing a novel about two actresses who go to New York, because that's what I know about. One has lost touch with reality, disappears and is picked up by a man. ~ Julie Walters

I've been writing since I'm five years old. I've been writing books since high school - junior high, high school. I write every single day. I never thought I'd be published. ~ Karrine Steffans

Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic. It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but two alternatives: write English, or write gobbledygook. ~ John Lukacs

There are many expressions to describe someone who is going about something in the wrong way. "Making a mistake" is one way to describe this situation. "Screwing up" is another, although it is a bit rude, and "Attempting to rescue Lemony Snicket by writing letters to a congressman, instead of digging an escape tunnel" is a third way, although it is a bit too specific. ~ Lemony Snicket

My job as a songwriter is to write good songs. ~ Greg Brown

For me, my writing benefits from my experience. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'm giving up acting ... I'm 66 and there are a number of celebrations I've got to get down on paper, and acting doesn't allow me to do that. It was a hell of a drug, performance. It's a great thrill, especially for a storyteller. But it can go. Directing can go. Writing can't go. And in terms of what lies ahead, I want to have a burning focus - almost like smoke coming up from the paper as I write. ~ Athol Fugard

Stop thinking about writing as art. Think of it as work. If you're an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you're not an artist, at least you can do a good day's work. ~ Paddy Chayefsky

A writer represents his family history. My grandfather was a senator and my father served in the Roosevelt administration. In other words, I grew up in politics. This is why it seemed perfectly natural to take part in the battles of my time, and to participate in the writing of the history of my country. ~ Gore Vidal

I did not want to write a story about the invasion of Earth, so I had to create a race capable of living nearby, which meant to either on the Moon, on Mars, or on Venus. I picked Venus. ~ Sarah Zettel

Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else. ~ Kathryn Stockett

The novel cannot submit to authority. ~ Julian Gough

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. ~ Anne Lamott

So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write. ~ George Lopez