Writing-process Quotes

I was in the book, and the book was in my head, and as long as I stayed inside my head, I could go o...

Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things - thoughts, ideas, o...

Also, I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue--the clue--lies there. I'm always ferreting out e...

I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look a...

Without entering here into a dissertation upon the historical romance, it may be said that in proper...

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought...

I would write:"The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the spli...

There should be more or less of a jumble in your head or on your note paper after the first time and...

She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without pri...

Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to th...

He singled out aspects of Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity...

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all...

Steven wrote to me today, saying, 'Don't you feel like sticking your head out of the window and yell...

Maybe that's when bad scripts are written, when you choose the theme first. I consider that I've som...

In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits ...

Don’t have the veins bulging in your biro.

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at ...

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at ...

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at ...

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at ...

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

When the work is the best work, it's more like being a secretary than it is a creative person, you j...

The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a sea...

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, do you not? Of course you do. When you're writing,...

I think you will find that, if you continue to write fiction, every character you create is partly y...

Writing is the act of finding out what I think.

I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art ...

Some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth.

But in the wake of 'Bullet,' all the guys wanted to know was, 'How's it doing? How's it selling?' Ho...

What Writing Is: Telepathy, of course.

The gotta, as in: “I think I’ll stay up another fifteen-twenty minutes, honey, I gotta see how this ...

Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what t...

The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a s...

I'm writing a book. I'm almost finished. I numbered the pages. Now all I have to do is fill them in.

I’m now writing out of rage — and I feel a kind of Nietzschean elation. It’s tonic. I roar with laug...

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your ...

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story...

But whatever the exact psychology of the process {receiving recognition or literary success}, the pr...

Rules such as "Write what you know," and "Show, don't tell," while doubtlessly grounded in good sens...

He could not put down a word without suspecting that it might be the wrong one and that if he held b...

Usually naive interviewers hover between two mutually contradictory convictions: one, that a text we...

I have learned how I work best, and that is something that, if you're going to be a professional wri...

It could be a thousand things, distractions, worries;but very often I think what keeps a writer from...

Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of n...

The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pie...

These scenes, by the way, are not altogether a literary device - a means of summing up and making a ...

She was almost felled to the ground by the extraordinary sight which now met her eyes. There was the...

And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminde...

I suppose that I did for myself what psychoanalysts do for their patients. I expressed some very lon...

There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.

Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an ar...

I only write when the spirit moves me ... and the spirit moves me every day. William Faulkner, Oxfor...

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the y...

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the y...

As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granari...

There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of wr...

It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If...

Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Ot...

It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is ...

You can be a good painter if you study Cézanne's vision. Whoever dares to copy Van Gogh falls inevit...

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some ...

I have written various words, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and bits of dismantled sentences, frag...

Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a rom...

I've discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at...

Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is ...

All good writers write [terrible first drafts.] This is how they end up with good second drafts and ...

You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing ...

Now the thing is no longer a vision: it is paper.

Nobody whispers it in your ear. It is like something you memorized once and forgot. Now it comes bac...

So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points,...

The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while his hand moved rapid...

To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them t...

Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description.

I could never stand to be a writer. Not a real writer. It's entirely too awful, having thoughts that...

Writing is a struggle against silence.

What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the study of real life. If they observed this du...

I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore an...

Sometimes I think that creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities b...

She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day af...

Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?""Yes, of course it is. At least, when you g...

She had her image… and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it...

The more genuinely creative [the writer] is, the more he will want his work to develop in accordance...

We may properly and profitably amuse ourselves by distinguishing those writers who are respectively ...

I hate writing, I love having written.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do the...

I went on steadily trying to 'find out how to'; but I wrote two or three novels without feeling that...

You need the devotion to your work that a priest of God has for his.

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his pro...

Then I started to think in Lipp’s about when I had first been able to write a story about losing eve...

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen...

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg adress was so short. The laws of prose writing are immutab...

You don't write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.

Writing takes a pen, a sheet of paper and, to start with, just the shadow of an idea.

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everyt...

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He ...

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing...

So much of a novelist’s writing … takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is w...

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