Top 100 Writing Process Process Quotes
#1. Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people.
Patti Smith
#2. Writing starts with living.
- Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing
L.L. Barkat
#3. I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.
Melody Carlson
#4. You have to stop and freeze the moment," he told me I had told her. "You have to make yourself remember by repeating it in your head over and over. You have to write to preserve your sanity.
Jenny Hubbard
#5. So, it's a continual process of trial and error and then I find things and I throw it out and start again, but I keep writing it over again.
Edward Hirsch
#6. I'm very keen. Adaptations of other people's work, too. I got fascinated by the adaptation process, so I think that'd be a really interesting task. I would happily write original screenplays as well. I think it's become one of my favorite genres.
Emma Donoghue
#7. I'm widest awake as a writer doing something new, engaged in a process I'm not sure I can finish, generating at the edge of my powers. Some people bungee jump; I write.
Barbara Kingsolver
#8. 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
#9. In all honesty, I've written movies that have been made, and the process has not been as satisfying as writing for television.
Vince Gilligan
#10. In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us.
C. G. Jung
#11. Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.
P.D. James
#12. Laughing in my ear is a muse amused by how I paint her whims on paper with silly words.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#13. My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.
Kathe Koja
#14. This is not necessarily the answer people want, but ultimately, I think writing is an amoral process. Your ultimate responsibility is to the truth of the story you're trying to tell.
Lynn Coady
#15. Writing is the act of finding out what I think.
Stephen King
#16. Life baffles me most days. Maybe that's why I write. To try and make sense of it all.
Christy Hall
#17. The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got.
Julia Cameron
#18. It is impossible to know what fate will bring. If you love to write or paint, you will keep on writing or painting, and things will either work out or not, and you just have to keep being in the process.
Maira Kalman
#19. The Internet is a limitless library at your fingertips. It's a great place to start with the acquisition of knowledge. My process is to go to a place when I'm writing about it. Nothing captures the essence, feeling and flavor of a place better than when I'm actually there and doing the writing.
Barry Eisler
#20. A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
William Stafford
#21. The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.
Diane Johnson
#23. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant - inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
Daniel Dennett
#24. Most people assume I write at night because of the kind of books I write, but I can shut out the light with my mind.
Carla H. Krueger
#25. First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.
Octavia E. Butler
#27. I enjoy the song writing process more than anything. It's what I like the most, just sitting in my room with guitar or at the piano or something. Just making something up, something that's not there, that suddenly is there.
Bernard Fanning
#28. Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their voices.
[Ten rules for writing fiction (The Guardian, 20 February 2010)]
Helen Dunmore
#29. Sometimes when I am writing, I feel as though I were not reliving the events I describe here, but rather living them. That there is no distance at all, and that I do not know how my story will end. It is an extraordinary sensation, since, of course, I know only too well how it will all end.
Anita Shreve
#30. Writing fluency sometimes needs an intense agony somewhere in your mind
Munia Khan
#31. For Christians who desire to write, the call to read broadly is an absolute necessity, for writing is, in many ways, the process of digesting and synthesizing not only the thoughts and experiences of a writer's own life, but the writer's intellectual wanderings as well.
Gene C. Fant Jr.
#32. Dedicating a writing session to someone is like sending a prayer for them out into the world. I will never know if my writing, my dedication to them, my prayer for them made any difference in their lives. But I know it makes a difference in mine.
Elizabeth Rusch
#33. The worst part of writing is meeting all these great new characters and having no one to talk about (the adventures you share with) them.
Claudia Bakker
#34. As you write your novel, you gradually start thinking like some of your characters in it. And at times the writer may lose himself completely in some character.
Avijeet Das
#35. It's not the medium that's the message - it's consciousness - the wonder of being able to wonder ...
John Geddes
#36. I felt differently about her [Gypsy Rose Lee] during every phase of the research and writing process. Often, I felt incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicated 'to say the least' relationship with her family, her mother especially.
Karen Abbott
#37. In my own writing, I've mostly abandoned end-rhyme, but wordplay is still a huge part of my process.
Matthea Harvey
#38. 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
#39. If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.
Eddie Vedder
#40. When you write a manuscript, it feels like being in a relationship with someone. You'll hate it, get bored with it, be pissed of, like you just want to break up. But, just like any relationship, you will fall in love again and again, like you don't want to lose it.
Alvi Syahrin
#42. To write is to feel the dance of your soul swirling in a dream that drips imagination onto paper.
DiAnn Mills
#43. While victors may get to write history, novelists get to write/right reality.
M.T. Bass
#44. How to preside over your own internal disorder? Finding the "I" that can represent the pack of you is the first challenge of the memoirist.
Tracy Kidder
#45. The writer,' said Donald Barthelme, 'is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do.' In this mode of not-knowing, the thick-torsoed, literal, and crew-cut mind is moved to the sidelines in favor of the swinging, perceptive, light-footed, tutu-wearing subconscious.
George Saunders
#46. Reflective writing produces distinct rewards. A writer does not claim to live exclusively in the moment. A pensive writer retreats into oneself in noble attempt to meld memory, thought, faith, doubt, and other strong emotions into thought capsules while exploring the inscrutable web of creation.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#47. But in the wake of 'Bullet,' all the guys wanted to know was, 'How's it doing? How's it selling?' How to tell them I didn't give a flying fuck how it was doing in the marketplace, that what I cared about was how it was doing in the reader's heart?
Stephen King
#48. When Kirk dies it was very emotional and very strange, in the moment and all the way through the process. I'd read it in the script and I'd always be struck by what I'd just done and what we were doing, and that this was my childhood hero and I was writing his death.
Ronald D. Moore
#50. And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds, when he had found the word, and her husband said, "Poor old Augustus--he's a true poet," which was high praise from her husband.
Virginia Woolf
#51. 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
#52. Grab for time to write instead of wait for time.
Julia Cameron
#53. Writing a book isn't an easy process nor is it always enjoyable, but it is one of life's most satisfying achievements.
Guy Kawasaki
#54. Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.
Walter Benjamin
#55. Writing is a process of discovery of what you really do know. You can't limit yourself in advance to what you know, because you don't know everything you know.
Walter Murch
#57. Musicians have notes. Painters have paint. Writers have words.
Lisa Fantino
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. The writing process for me is pretty much always the same - it's a solitary experience.
Sheryl Crow
#61. The challenge of the writer is to transform - artistically and imaginatively - a unique personal experience into a universal, meaningful story.
Hillel F. Damron
#62. I couldn't not write. Sometimes I ask myself, How do people get through life without writing? I write to calm anxiety, to process pain. Writing to me is reflection.
Andrew Holleran
#63. Art is the overflow of emotion into action.
Brian Raif
#64. 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
#65. The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.
Madeleine L'Engle
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. Your writing should be filled with simple complexities and complex simplicities. Because that is life.
Christy Hall
#70. Give the reader what they want, just not the way they expect it.
William Goldman
#71. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.
Samuel Colbran
#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. Forget ideas, Mr. Author.
What kind of pen do you use?
Stephen Fry
#74. 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
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. 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
#82. I love stand-up, but the process of writing is a little more lonely. I want to keep doing both, though.
Jack Whitehall
#83. 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
#84. Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.
Jennifer Hudson Taylor
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.
Michelle M. Pillow
#88. I enjoy the process of writing. The torment comes in getting my bottom on the chair and in front of the typewriter.
Caryl Rivers
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. Writers are always alone, even in a room bursting with noises of the familiar.
Rachel Thompson
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. I believe that what we want to write wants to be written
Julia Cameron
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. A fiction writer weaves a fabric of lies in hopes of revealing deeper human truths.
Wally Lamb
#99. 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
#100. A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur - or APE.
Guy Kawasaki
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