Writing-process Quotes

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...

Go APE: Author a great book, Publish it quickly, and Entrepreneur your way to success. Self-publishi...

Starting your book is only the first five miles of a twenty-six-mile marathon that’s one-third of a ...

Writingis therapeutic. It helps you cope with issues that seem gargantuan at the time.The process of...

A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE.

I have a hardcore attitude: a “self-published, ghost-written book” is wrong because the concept behi...

Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath...

People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing…

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me...

As I suspect is true of many who write for a living, as I write I think about all sorts of things. I...

No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent y...

I do not distinguish between the construction of a book and that of a painting and I always proceed ...

Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.

In the seventies I used to work in the bedroom of my flat at a little table. I worked in longhand wi...

You pull a book from the shelf and there was an invention... Almost like cooking, I thought sleepily...

think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business d...

Creating a novel means moving into the past, the hoped for, the imagined. It is an emotional journey...

His world was small, an illiterate county seat, a backward state, though from it he fashioned someth...

Eating words and listening to them rumbling in the gut is how a writer learns the acid and alkali of...

A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed...

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems ...

Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a ...

Unlike Alice, Garp was a real writer —not because he wrote more beautifully than she wrote but becau...

When you are writing, you must treat it as the most important thing in the world, even when you know...

Whether pleasant or dismal, the past is always a safe territory, if only because it is already exper...

I just thought, ‘Wait a minute, if I’m going to start writing again, I have to go to the quiet place...

I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. ~ I believe that we yearn to trans...

I do not put in long hours at the keys - or very seldom. Instead, I snatch time. I write in the cran...

Once writing becomes an act of listening instead of an act of speech, a great deal of the ego goes o...

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

Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.

Grab for time to write instead of wait for time.

If we eliminate the word "writer", if we just go back to writing as an act of listening and naming w...

I believe that what we want to write wants to be written

The "if I had time" lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and...

Writing is a way not only to metabolize life but to alchemize it as well. It is a way to transform w...

The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got.