Writing Process Writing Advice Quotes

#1. Writing as a creative art flourishes only when there are no rules. Rules stifle you from entering the silent and forbidden spaces where the core of the story is waiting to be revealed.

Gloria D. Gonsalves

#2. Writing starts with living.

L.L. Barkat

#3. Raise the bar. Don't duck under it.

Peter James West

#4. My best advice for aspiring writers is to read a lot and write. Don't worry if you don't get your first, fifth or tenth novel published, if you keep going you'll make it. Also read "how to write" books as they may make the process a bit quicker.

Katie Fforde

#5. Poetic license is not a license to scribe recklessly.

C. Kennedy

#6. WHILE writing, just try to have fun with your ms. Enjoy the process, but push on. Always push toward the finish line!

Darynda Jones

#7. The art of writing involves making as many cups of tea as you can in the time available for writing. Then adding extra time for writing ...

Alan Dapre

#8. My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.

Elmore Leonard

#9. The only 'ironclad rules' in writing fiction are the laws of physics and the principles of grammar, and even those can be bent.

Val Kovalin

#10. No art ever came out of not risking your neck.

Eudora Welty

#11. Write what you want to write. That's the only advice a writer will ever need.

Chloe Thurlow

#12. I know it's difficult in the beginning. But, listen. If you have the impulse to write, do yourself a favor, do the world a favor, and write.

Christy Hall

#13. There is nothing more valuable in the writing process than a friend to hold you accountable to your own potential.

J.R. Young

#14. Books are like rivers, meandering this way and that, but taking us on a steady, flowing course to somewhere different.

Carla H. Krueger

#15. In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.

Ray Bradbury

#16. To unlock the writer's block is to keep writing until you can unknot the "not". If you cannot, then put a can in the plot and unwrap it a lot!

Ana Claudia Antunes

#17. What is your advice to young writers?"
"Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

Charles Bukowski

#18. Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.

Amy Joy

#19. My best writing happens when I'm fighting to produce it.

Carla H. Krueger

#20. The most important step in the whole process was to just sit down and do it. My hobby has become a second career. Who knew?-Jamie Beck, Romance Novelist

Holly Hurd

#21. A writer will always be a writer. It's not a choice, it's a destiny.

Stephanie Lennox

#22. Don't be afraid of what you're creating.

Christy Hall

#23. Yes, writing is that easy. Yes, writing is that hard. But if you want to do it you can. Only you can stop you.

R.M. Donaldson

#24. When a person sets out to learn from others and not to teach others he becomes a true writer.

Carla H. Krueger

#25. There is nothing better than expressions in words.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#26. Get your story written, you always have the second and third draft to fix things like tense, 1st vs 3rd person, the exact right word, etc.

Andromeda Edison

#27. Writing's in the nouns.

Lori Roy

#28. I'm sorry if ... I get too personal, if I make you uncomfortable, but writing is like one of the seven deadly sins, like Sharing on Mr. Rogers, and once you get the bug you're trapped in The Neighborhood of Make-Believe forever.

Shannon Celebi

#29. Never try to keep it professional, keep it smutty, write with bodily fluids on sandpaper, and damn the men with clipboards in white suits, the literary bean-counters, the prose police.

Peter Selgin

#30. Being a writer is not just about typing. It's also about surviving the rollercoaster of the creative journey.

Joanna Penn

#31. As a writer, the main skill you need is curiosity. As a reader, the main tool you need is open-mindedness.

Gloria D. Gonsalves

#32. Begin to write, your heart flow with sacred words.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#33. And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves.

Darynda Jones

#34. On the Writing Process:
When in doubt, take it out.,

Barbara DaCosta

#35. When you feel that creeping self-doubt, acknowledge it. Write down your feelings in your journal in your journal... and then continue with your writing.

Joanna Penn

#36. We will need to find people who will provide a safe writing space for us, where criticism comes late and love and delight come early.

- from Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing

L.L. Barkat

#37. Getting started on writing a book isn't as hard as it sounds. You don't need a plan and an outline. In fact, all you need are two things: time and one idea.

Natasha Lester

#38. Let life be the foundation. Be brave. Wander deep inside yourself to the little room no one knows about. Fling the door wide open and write.

Christy Hall

#39. If a writer starts worring about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line.

Baby Halder

#40. To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.

Bonnie Friedman

#41. You can't take it personally when something you have written sucks. Just delete it and write something else.

Gudjon Bergmann

#42. Language always occurs in a context - you can speak Elizabethan words, but to speak the language you have to put on the mindset ...

John Geddes

#43. The only difference between writers and people who don't write is that writers aren't afraid to display their demons.

Carla H. Krueger

#44. Until you take a pen to write, then you will see the miracle of writing.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#45. Fiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination.

Luke Taylor

#46. Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#47. Develop the skill of writing to avoid errors but if you do make them, don't be demotivated

Bernard Kelvin Clive

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

Ernest Hemingway,

#49. Developing your voice takes ...
time and practice.

Darynda Jones

#50. I recommend writing standing up from time to time. It's easier to dance when you finish writing.

Diego Ramos

#51. In reading we live hundreds lives, in writing we live thousands of lives.

R.M. Donaldson

#52. I think if a writer is being honest they'd admit to a file full of a dozen or more stories that are all started to varying degrees. They're like the kid who wants to be a firefighter and a police officer and an astronaut.

Dan Alatorre

#53. There is always, always, always something to write about.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#54. There's a fine line between appropriate and inappropriate, but it better be a strong, clear line.' As a teacher, I took that advice to heart. As a writer, I asked, "'But what happens if the line isn't strong or clear?

Joseph Kenyon

#55. Art is a journey of excellence not a goal of perfection.

Jacqueline Patricks

#56. Consider yourself a functional character in someone else's novel - a background character - a person on the street - that's the perspective ...

John Geddes

#57. Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

John Waters

#58. Your pen is your sword. Wield it wisely.

C.A. Simonson

#59. The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.

William Zinsser

#60. Stay within the confines of your chosen topic. If you start to stray away from your topic and find an urge to showcase everything that you know, resist that urge. Remember that you are writing a book, not the book.

Gudjon Bergmann

#61. We write to embrace the sacred thoughts.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#62. Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.

Shannon Celebi

#63. There is a difference between fresh and weird. You never want to throw your reader out of the story. Keep it fresh but natural.

Darynda Jones

#64. When we sit down to write, we psychically enter a sanctuary. This safe haven is our own personal space where we can say whatever is on our mind, where we can talk about what matters most to us, where we can imagine the kind of world that we would like to live.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#65. Writings are thoughts in a defined moment.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#66. 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer
Write.
Write more.
Write even more.
Write even more than that.
Write when you don't want to.
Write when you do.
Write when you have something to say.
Write when you don't.
Write every day.
Keep writing.

Brian Clark

#67. I personally believe that one learns to write by writing.

Jack Jordan

#68. Let your characters lead when you're dancing together.

Caron Kamps Widden

#69. 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

#70. Writing starts with living.
- Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing

L.L. Barkat

#71. The thing I've learned is that thinking is not writing.

Erica Lorraine Scheidt

#72. Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.

Jennifer Hudson Taylor

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. 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

#76. Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it.

Don Roff

#77. The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can't, you're dead

Warren Adler

#78. If you don't make time for writing, writing won't make time for you.

Sandra Elaine Scott

#79. Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it.

Christy Hall

#80. An author who rewrites his own work must essentially be two people. One is the free flowing uncritical writer who creates the bulk of the material - the other is the extremely critical editor whose aim it is to make the book as good as it can become.

Gudjon Bergmann

#81. There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo.

Alan Watt

#82. It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't be careful enough.

William Zinsser

#83. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.

Anne Lamott

#84. It's better to be remembered for what you said, not what you earned.

Carla H. Krueger

#85. Give all that you can.
No more. No less.
Every. Single. Day.

Christy Hall

#86. Live inside your stories, yes, but do not hide behind them.

Christy Hall

#87. At seventeen I tried to write poetry confining myself solely to Anglo-Saxon words - don't know if it helped, but it made me more concrete ...

John Geddes

#88. There is no such thing as an 'unemployed writer', only an unemployed mind

Kevin Cowdall

#89. Your writing should be filled with simple complexities and complex simplicities. Because that is life.

Christy Hall

#90. I don't know that it's particularly good for my writing process, but I have gotten some very valuable writing ideas and advice through Twitter and Facebook and other social network sites.

Rachel Caine

#91. It's all mine, it's all sacred.

Coco J. Ginger

#92. When you start out writing, your inner creative is just a little seedling with tiny leaves above the earth, peeping out into the air for the first time.

Joanna Penn

#93. The sooner you finish procrastinating, the sooner you can get back to your art.

Stephanie Lennox

#94. Writing is easy. Writing a publishable book is hard.

Eliza Green

#95. If a writer knows everything that is going to happen, then his book is dead before he begins it.

V.S. Naipaul

#96. Inspiration for my short stories grows from a psychic kernel, a vision of some sort or an eccentric, colorful dream.

Lawren Leo

#97. ..here's the editor's prescription, writer: 1000 words daily until next checkup.

Rob Bignell, Editor

#98. Being a writer, I think, is much like being a parent or a pet parent in my case. I love all of my characters equally, even if I want you to hate them, I love them. If you don't love all your characters you're not doing it right.

Ellie Elisabeth

#99. When writing, I uncage KAT: Keep Adding Tension. Even if I don't know where the story's going, petting the KAT keeps it purring.

Don Roff

#100. Passion is a deep love for sacred activity.

Lailah Gifty Akita