Top 100 The Writing Process Quotes
#1. The writing process for me is pretty much always the same - it's a solitary experience.
Sheryl Crow
#2. If we were truly in the studio making a record, it would have been more time consuming, and certainly I would have been more involved in the writing process.
Taylor Dayne
#3. Basically, editing is done in rehearsal and in the writing process and in the acting, so it's very, very tricky, very, very tricky.
Julie Delpy
#4. I really enjoy the writing process because I can do it from my house. I can create these characters and take them in the different directions that I want to take them. You have a lot of freedom as a writer.
Ricky Schroder
#5. The writing process is sort of like when you've got no electricity and you've gotten up in the middle of the night to find the bathroom, feeling your way along in the dark. I can't hardly tell you what I do because I really don't know.
Carolyn Chute
#6. Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you.
Charles Ghigna
#7. All of my scripts are based on other people's novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process.
Tom Stoppard
#8. I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay.
Quentin Tarantino
#9. For me, the writing process is the same as the reading process. I want to know what happens next.
Neal Asher
#10. There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.
Nicholas Sparks
#11. Anxiety is not only an inevitable part of the writing process but a necessary part. If you're not scared, you're not writing.
Ralph Keyes
#12. The obscure, unexplainable aspect of the writing process is about how some rhymes appear in your head. It often feels more like tuning in to some kind of channel than composing words in your mind.
Sahara Sanders
#13. My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you're not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You're actually discovering in the writing process, you're actually creating knowledge.
Alan Lightman
#14. You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it's really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.
Diane Setterfield
#15. The writing process isn't something I'm in love with. I'm an illustrator who writes.
Chris Riddell
#16. 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
#17. I worked initially in very low-budget independent films that I often wrote. My early work was all written by myself, and then I adapted 'Tsotsi,' so I was used to the writing process being, in a way, integral to my directing. I felt it really prepared me.
Gavin Hood
#18. I'd love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television.
Denis Leary
#19. Actually, I very much dislike routine. Creating music is my chaos therapy. The writing process puts me in a good place. Recording the music is the release of however I felt in the song.
Mpho Koaho
#20. I enjoy talking to groups who are interested in the writing process or the industry. I never teach - because truthfully, I don't know how it all works; it just does. Sort of magic-like. But I love to share my experiences and perspectives.
Lori Foster
#21. The writing process is very much like being in a dark tunnel, and you don't really know what you will end up with until you have created it.
Emily Haines
#22. During the writing process, I tend not to listen to too much music. I obviously wear a lot of influences on my sleeve, but if I was listening to too many records, I would turn into too much of a monkey.
Jay Reatard
#23. The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.
A. B. Yehoshua
#24. 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
#25. The easiest part of the writing process is whichever part I'm not currently doing.
Scott Tracey
#26. I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I'm driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of 'Breaking Bad,' where there's so much depth to the character, you can't help but be invested when you watch.
Sasha Roiz
#27. When I return to the writing process after being away from it for a while, the first part of it always is being honest with myself: What am I into right now? Is it rock bands and guitars, is it noise, is it dance beats and electronics? Is it space, is it clutter?
Trent Reznor
#28. Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quality of discovery.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#29. I love the writing process. It's something that I'm interested in personally and something I always do on every movie.
Olivia Wilde
#30. I intentionally approached each story in 'Killing and Dying' in a different way, and that includes the writing process.
Adrian Tomine
#31. I have enjoyed writing songs for so long ... it felt like in order to make music that I could relate to myself, I would have to be a part of the writing process.
Bridgit Mendler
#32. What I didn't realize is that the writing process for comedies is that you do your table read, and if you aren't funny on that first day during the table read, they take your jokes away and give them to somebody else.
David Morse
#33. Each book starts from ashes really. I don't feel that I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell or that story to tell, but I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living.
Philip Roth
#34. The writing process is like developing a photograph; you never know what will turn out. There's nothing like penning a frame, and giving the story world permission to unfold as I witness the picture come into focus.
Paige Crutcher
#35. Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process - maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like 'Lights Please' happens like that.
J. Cole
#36. You don't teach a person how to write as much as you teach that person how to survive the writing process.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips
#37. My neck is too arthritic to snap around. The big shift in my perspective that happened in the writing process, however, was the paramount importance of the "West" epitomized by Cincinnati.
Charles R. Morris
#38. I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.
Quentin Tarantino
#39. The writing process was some of the most exciting and rewarding moments of my life. It felt a lot like being in a band.
Ethan Hawke
#40. There is nothing more valuable in the writing process than a friend to hold you accountable to your own potential.
J.R. Young
#41. What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.
Andre Dubus
#42. Directing is such a crucial part of the writing process; you start directing and you see what does not work. "Oh, God, what was I thinking?" and then you can rearrange it.
Conor McPherson
#43. 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
#44. In 'Snow White and the Hunstman,' when we see them in the Dark Forest, you're allowed a lot of freedom to be able to cutaway to, for instance, the prince. That B and C story stuff helps the writing process, even though it makes it a more complicated movie.
Evan Daugherty
#45. the writing process behind The Tilted World.
Tom Franklin
#46. 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
#47. When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn't feel laboring, that's usually a good sign for me.
David E. Kelley
#48. The interesting part about the writing process is that you can never see all the way to the end, not if something is happening over the course of a year and a half, or two years.
Tom Perrotta
#49. The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.
Mick Jones
#50. I was fascinated with the writing process and seeing the evolution of a sketch and how it would change up to the minute before it went on the air.
Trevor Moore
#51. I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.
Alice Englert
#52. I start casting early in the writing process, so I can tailor the script to the gifts of the actors.
Judd Apatow
#53. Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.
Terry Tempest Williams
#54. I got a little bit lost in the writing process: like, that moment in the 'Fight Song' music video where I'm throwing the crumpled paper on the bed, that was really true life. I was filling journals with different possibilities of lyrics for the first verse. And none of them felt right.
Rachel Platten
#55. I love the structural part of the writing process.
Kate Morton
#56. The writing process is not just putting down one page after another-it's a lot of writing and then rewriting, restructuring the story, changing the way things come together.
Rebecca Stead
#57. In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.
Doris Lessing
#58. Well, everything surprises me about the writing process because illustrating comes much more naturally to me than writing does.
Brian Selznick
#59. Don't think about the writing process too much. Just do one thing: tell the motherfucking story.
Don Roff
#60. Teach your students real-world writing purposes, add a teacher who models his or her struggles with the writing process, throw in lots of real-world mentor texts for students to emulate, and give our kids the time necessary to enable them to stretch as writers.
Kelly Gallagher
#62. 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
#63. Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I've been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process.
Laura Hillenbrand
#64. By the end of the writing process, which is about 80 songs per album, I look at the material and think, what's going to make a difference in someone's life.
Jason Mraz
#65. I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.
Sue Monk Kidd
#66. 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
#67. I have had quite a lot of prizes, but I don't think it makes any difference to the ease or difficulty to the writing process.
Ruth Rendell
#68. When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted.
Gunter Grass
#69. Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.
Sydney Pollack
#70. Thinking about writing isn't writing. Planning to write isn't writing. Neither is talking about it, posting about it, or complaining how hard it is. These may be part of the process. But only writing is writing.
Jack Ketchum
#71. I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.
Tess Gerritsen
#72. If you're writing a screenplay for a feature, you don't have any involvement with the casting process, the editing process, the set design, the costume design, or any of that stuff.
David Benioff
#73. Give the reader what they want, just not the way they expect it.
William Goldman
#74. Teasing out the way the world might look through another's eyes is what makes the creative process so fascinating and enjoyable.
Stephen L. Carter
#75. This isn't a religious book though I mention God, not a medical advisory though I speak of pain. It's a circus, a mortuary, a grade school, a limousine ride. Will it be worth the paper it's printed on or the screen you hold in your hand? I just hope you remember it next week.
Chila Woychik
#76. Having read several prize-winning novels, Fancy was confident that she now knew the recipe:
1. Write a simple narrative.
2. Make a long list.
3. Scatter the contents of your list throughout your narrative.
Jaclyn Moriarty
#77. The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.
Madeleine L'Engle
#78. Writing one's first novel, getting it sold, and shepherding it through the labyrinths of editing, production, marketing, journalism, and social media is an arduous and nerve-wracking process.
Paul Di Filippo
#79. Art is the overflow of emotion into action.
Brian Raif
#80. The challenge of the writer is to transform - artistically and imaginatively - a unique personal experience into a universal, meaningful story.
Hillel F. Damron
#81. For me,the Bild-Dichtung [image-poem] is the ideal form,because the drawing process is constantly being interrupted or contrasted by the writing. And since I always have something to say when I am writing,the effort has a balancing effect. Drawing and writing are wonderful complements.
Gunter Brus
#82. I tend to write songs fast, so the process usually only lasts around 30 minutes. In the studio is where I really can artistically breathe, and let my ideas flow.
Alan Cohen
#83. The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do ... Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how.
Donald Barthelme
#84. It's all just so fraught when you're writing and then going through the editorial process. It feels like this shape-shifting thing. When it's done, and you can't change a single word, it's a totally different thing. I was surprised by what that thing was.
Danielle Dutton
#85. The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.
Chris Stapleton
#86. 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
#87. Writers are always alone, even in a room bursting with noises of the familiar.
Rachel Thompson
#88. I'm not talented or gifted. I'm a committed, meticulous workaholic. The only reason I succeed is because I refuse to fail.
Jessie Snow
#89. Attempting to express a person's objective reality and subjective state of mind with the written word is an endless task because writing alters our perception of reality and amends our mental equilibrium.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#90. I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art on the road that may indeed end in extinction.
Stephen King
#91. I enjoy the process of writing. The torment comes in getting my bottom on the chair and in front of the typewriter.
Caryl Rivers
#92. Writing music is really personal, and it's a really exciting thing to participate in because represents the full creative process: It feels like something is coming from nothing.
Zooey Deschanel
#93. It's amazing how my mind opens up right when I have to run on the treadmill. I've finished three chapters rather than run a mile.
Dan Alatorre
#94. I always dread the process of writing because I'm not a writer. I'm an audible guy, I'm a verbal guy. I love to talk. I write a book every couple years, but it just takes everything out of me to get a book out.
T.C. Boyle
#95. I love stand-up, but the process of writing is a little more lonely. I want to keep doing both, though.
Jack Whitehall
#97. My stories take three or four months to fix, and it's not magical of a process. Ultimately it's a boring, difficult process. I write everything out, and then the parts I think are funny I put in bold. Then I go perform it. Then the parts that aren't funny, I unbold them.
Kumail Nanjiani
#98. More and more I don't have any philosophy about writing, except that it is something we can do if God is good to us. Of course we are the ones who have to do the paperwork.
M.V. Carey
#99. Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big. The entire process is beyond intoxicating.
Kate Braverman
#100. Thinking is creating with God, as thinking is writing with the ready writer; and worlds are only leaves turned over in the process of composition, about his throne.
Henry Ward Beecher
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