Quotes About Writing Your Own Story

#1. If you write a story based on a real person, you're trapped by the details of the real person and his life. It gets in the way of writing your own story.

Caroline B. Cooney

#2. If you're not writing your own story, you're a character in someone else's.

Chris Brogan

#3. Do you wait for things to happen, or do you make them happen yourself? I believe in writing your own story.

Charlotte Eriksson

#4. Writing your own story around the same ideas is not plagiarism; at worst, it's being unoriginal.

Charles Stross

#5. Love writes without words.

A.D. Posey

#6. There is nothing like been consumed by the blazing fire of untold story.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#7. For my type of story and my kind of writing, I think 'Vanity Fair' is the right forum.

Dominick Dunne

#8. What draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.

Lisa Cron

#9. In my case, if I start out by thinking about the plot, things don't go well. Small points, such as my impression of what is likely to occur, do come to mind, but I let the rest of the story take its own course. I don't want to spend as long as two years writing a story whose plot I already know.

Haruki Murakami

#10. Search your own life for the story only you can tell. The best thing about writing from life is that you can be sure of using original material. And no research is needed beyond the time you spend looking deep inside your own heart.

Elizabeth Held Forsyth

#11. The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.

Mary E. Pearson

#12. For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.

Eudora Welty

#13. We write from soul of the heart.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#14. I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

Jean M. Auel

#15. Every story I've written was written because I had to write it. Writing stories is like breathing for me; it is my life.

Ray Bradbury

#16. You write a book and you finish the book. That's your job done, right? You win the Booker and you have a whole new job. You have to be the thing, right? So instead of writing the story, you somehow are the story. And that I found that sort of terrible.

Anne Enright

#17. You know, I've always wrote my best stuff when it takes me hardly any time at all. Actually I wrote ... this is actually a really funny story ... 'Ghost Of Vincent Price', I've been wanting to write a song about Vincent Price coz he's one of my favorite characters of all time.

Wednesday 13

#18. The page is to the story as the seed is to the flower.

Bankei Yotaku

#19. Because of an instability at my own core, it comforts me to live, fixed, within a story. If reading is our consolation for having been allotted only one life, I find that writing oneself into a fictional world is even more comforting.

Norman Lock

#20. I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.

Joss Whedon

#21. The biggest problem is that people want to tell the whole story, and they write letters that are way longer than anything I could possibly run.

Emily Yoffe

#22. Teens want to read something that isn't a lie; we adults wish we could put our heads under the blankets and hide from the scary story we're writing for our kids.

Paolo Bacigalupi

#23. Try everything; listen to everyone. Follow no one. You are your own story guru!

Jeff Lyons

#24. Writing the story of your own life is a bit like drilling your own teeth.

Gloria Swanson

#25. 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

#26. Tell the story that's in your heart. Write for your own pleasure, not anyone else's. Then, if and when you're ready, find a reputable editor who will be honest with you about the quality of your book and your chances of publication. But never, ever, stop enjoying writing or you will be lost

Jane Cable

#27. When it comes to who will like your writing; the ones who will like it will like it because they can relate to the story or can find a piece of their own story hidden within - regardless of the mistakes. The ones who won't, never will - no matter what.

Beverly S. Harless

#28. You are your own journey.

A.D. Posey

#29. People have been telling me I'm a failure and that I'm doing it all wrong for 20 years now. Never trust anybody when they tell you how your story goes. You know your story. You write your own story.

Kevin Smith

#30. I started drawing at a very young age. Writing a story wasn't satisfying, but to actually draw our own world - it's like controlling your own dreams.

Daniel Clowes

#31. Being a creative person. It's so much more rewarding when you find things on your own, to live whatever the writers are writing or to display what the director is looking for. You are the thing that everybody uses to get the story out.

Laura Bell Bundy

#32. To name the world in your own terms, to tell your own story, is an act of authority and power. When you write, you are saying, in effect, 'I have a voice. I have a story. This is what I have to say.'

Rebecca McClanahan

#33. Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it's a character that's very different from you.

Jeffrey Eugenides

#34. I don't want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it's only my story.

Brian Fallon

#35. Stories want to be told. Stories have a power of their own ... you can't write a story until you've felt it. Breathed it in. Walked with your characters. Talked with them.

Angelica Banks

#36. Don't expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.

Leslie Gordon Barnard

#37. Improvise. Write your own damn story.

Eric Lange

#38. I believe that everybody needs to tell their story - to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be understood. We all want that, deep down inside - and writing a book is a great way to make sense of your own experience and to share it with others.

Shakti Gawain

#39. Surely the whole point of writing your own life story is to be as honest as you possibly can, revealing everything about yourself that is most private and probably most interesting for that very reason.

Judith Krantz

#40. God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings - not dummies! Be personal - be prejudiced - be catty - be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards!

Agatha Christie

#41. I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.

David Levithan

#42. Read a short story every day. By the end of the week you would have read volumes of stories.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#43. Nothing good about this but it's title. A priggish little yarn. And Hidden Riches is not a story
it's a machine. It creaks. It never made me forget for one instant that it was a story. Hence it isn't a story.

L.M. Montgomery

#44. I always plan the whole story in some detail, long before I start writing the actual thing. But even doing that, I find that there is plenty of room for spontaneity. Often the characters will lead the story off in a direction I hadn't originally intended!

Raymond Buckland

#45. If the story is in you, it has to come out.

Mopelola Adeniyi

#46. The challenge of the writer is to transform - artistically and imaginatively - a unique personal experience into a universal, meaningful story.

Hillel F. Damron

#47. Observing people. A spark of idea for a story sometimes comes from the simple act of observation.

Ika Natassa

#48. I love being able to create characters, give them problems, and make sure everything turns out right in the end. Writing gives me limitless opportunity to study the human condition, and a love story with a positive ending always lifts my spirits and warms my heart.

Jennie Adams

#49. You will find the greatest happiness in letting yourself be.

A.D. Posey

#50. Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
(advicetowriters)

George V. Higgins

#51. Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.

Bonnie Friedman

#52. The story unfolded quickly as I typed, in a way I was becoming familiar with. There was something about putting the truth on paper, bringing facts into the light of day where everyone could look at them, that made my fingers move faster -- it was becoming one of my favorite sensations on earth.

Gwenda Bond

#53. I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.

Anthony Trollope

#54. There is nothing to me but you. I know it's pathetic but, oh darling, it's true.

F.K. Preston

#55. I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.

Mark Twain

#56. So if you are writing a story where love is the meaning, where love is the highest and best of all, where love is the point, then you have to allow each person a choice.

John Eldredge

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

Samuel Colbran

#58. Accept nothing. Challenge everything.

A.D. Posey

#59. Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting.

George Saunders

#60. Ms. Scarlett always delivers hot, sexy alphas and this isn't any different. Holy smokes, is this ever HOT! Love her writing and the way she spins a story but adds the HOT factor. Her alphas are phenomenal! - JC

Scarlett Avery

#61. Headline writing is tough because often times you are given a predetermined number of spaces and words depending on the layout and the type of the story.

Jennifer Lee

#62. You and you alone are the only person that can live the life that writes the story that you were meant to tell. And the world needs your story because the world needs your voice.

Kerry Washington

#63. Now and again thousands of memories
converge, harmonize,
arrange themselves around a central idea
in a coherent form,
and I write a story.

Katherine Anne Porter

#64. It is the writer's job to craft a story so compelling that strangers will pay to hear it.

Seeley James

#65. History is about the untold story, and writing historical fiction is a wonderful way to present the past in a compelling and entertaining way.

Paul W. Feenstra

#66. I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.

Salman Rushdie

#67. I see the whole thing popping and parenthesizing in every direction, the story of that house and that kitchen.

Jack Kerouac

#68. If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

#69. I haven't thought about writing so much as potentially producing and finding my own projects to get into production. I want to be able to buy the rights to a story that I have read or a book that I have read.

Mandy Moore

#70. Writers do well to carefully attend to those moments of inspiration, because chances are that they're writing from a very deep place. The subsequent search that ensues to continually attend to that voice that you hear is what is going to give the story drive.

Adam Ross

#71. The voices in my head wouldn't shut up, so I let them write their story.

Shandy L. Kurth

#72. Energy will go into what you love, and what you love will grow. Go for a walk and watch it bloom.

A.D. Posey

#73. Rewriting is the crucible where books are born.

Cathryn Louis

#74. Don't look.
See.
Don't think.
Feel.
Don't hear.
Listen.
Pay attention
Miracles really do happen every day

A.D. Posey

#75. You can't be a serious writer of fiction unless you believe the story you are telling.

Norman Mailer

#76. When I start, I have a feeling for the characters, and maybe the shape of the story. Sometimes I might even have the last sentence in mind. But, no book I've ever written has ever ended the way I thought it would. Characters disappear, others come forward. Once you start writing, everything changes.

Paul Auster

#77. If you're a writer, write. You just keep writing. And if you're a filmmaker, you keep doing what you can to keep telling your stories; you don't stay on the one. Keep moving forward and doing what you can to tell whatever story you can tell, be it via writing, be it via filming it.

Dana Brunetti

#78. I was dressed up as a witch for Halloween, and wanted to write a story about my black cat before I went out trick-or-treating. I think it went out with the trash the next day.

Robin Hobb