Writing Work Quotes

#1. ...one of the main purposes of our assesment is to find evidence of the children using these ideas to make decisions about their writing work each day, catching them in the act [of writing].

Katie Wood Ray

#2. When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have to do.

John Scalzi

#3. Most of my writing work has been in film. I have done some TV, but most of it has been in film.

Jim Piddock

#4. You learn to write better by reading.
You learn to read better by writing.
Reading and writing work together
to improve your ability to think!

Unknown

#5. Anyone who has a choice and doesn't choose to write is a fool. The work is hard, the perks are few, the pay is terrible, and the product, when it's finally finished, is pure joy.

Mary Lee Settle

#6. When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

#7. When I moved out to Los Angeles to get some film and television work, and couldn't get any ... I became a little isolated, a little terrified, and it's a good place to get writing, because you're so bored. So I wrote a few screenplays, and people notice those.

Clark Gregg

#8. I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

George Orwell

#9. And the reason you hate writing so much is because you start analyzing your work before you're done pouring it onto the page. Your Left-brain won't let your Right-brain do it's job ... Your Right-brain gets the words on the page. The Left-brain makes them sing.

Jeff Bollow

#10. To me, it's not work. When I draw and I write, I find it relaxing. It's not like 9-to-5, where a man goes to a job and he isn't really interested in the job. Luckily, I get paid for doing what I'd do for nothing.

Bob Kane

#11. I used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot.

Isaac Marion

#12. 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

#13. I don't want my writing to be work to read. My main goal is completely shameless entertainment. I want people to smile and giggle and enjoy the book. I'm not trying to save the world through literature.

Gail Carriger

#14. I find writing for children much easier. I don't mean it's less demanding - you've got to have a talent for it and you've got to work very hard - but you don't have to pull your guts out and lay them on the line in quite the same way as when you're writing for adults.

Lynne Reid Banks

#15. There are many critics whose work I greatly admire. Even though I diverge from T.J. Reed in several important ways, I've learned greatly from his writings on Mann.

Philip Kitcher

#16. I got a bit obsessed with the whole English language and was writing journals and poetry. I've always been intrigued about psychology and philosophy and how people's minds work.

Lara Pulver

#17. Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.

Robin Hobb

#18. The best thing about being a writer is that 'work' is always something you love, plus usually accompanied by tea, coffee and cakes of some sort.

Jamie L. Harding

#19. Creative writing and shooting are muscles that atrophy. But when you work them, you become a self-generator who can branch out.

Eli Roth

#20. I tended to do anything as long as it felt like an adventure, and to stop when it felt like work. Which meant that life did not feel like work.

Neil Gaiman

#21. Work and thou canst escape the reward; whether the work be fine or course, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#22. The best advice I can give to any aspiring author is to write every single day. Work at the craft of writing. Take it seriously.

Andrea Davis Pinkney

#23. When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I'd work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I'd work on next, and then I'd panic.

Ann Leckie

#24. I usually work seven days a week and rarely take vacations, which is both lame and unsustainable. I don't mind the idea of writing seven days a week, I suppose. Getting some work done early in the morning. But ideally I would love to take one day a week off.

Brad Listi

#25. An unpublished writer should doubt themselves. They should constantly wonder whether what they're creating has merit. And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they can't make it better.

Johnny Rich

#26. The benefit of this kind of outlining is that you discover a story's flaws before you invest a lot of time writing the first draft, and it's almost impossible to get stuck at a difficult chapter, because you've already done the work to push through those kinds of blocks.

George Stephen

#27. My fine friends who are perfectionists, each in their own world where they are petty dictators, could write a perfect bill. Those of us who have grown up and matured ... understand that we have to work together on the big issues.

Newt Gingrich

#28. It's certainly hard to find fault with a work that quotes Shakespeare, Homer, and a dirty limerick about "the young man from Oswego.

Simon Sheppard

#29. I caution writers all the time to slow down and pay more attention to the work in front of them than to the end result. I don't think you write one book and get anywhere. I think you write five books and then maybe you are finally on the right path.

Sue Grafton

#30. The only test of work of literature is that it shall please other ages than its own.

Gerald Brenan

#31. Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy?

William Zinsser

#32. Turning the blog into a book was extremely difficult, a tremendous amount of sustained, hard work. Blogging is easy; writing a book is difficult.

Kate Christensen

#33. I think we overrate experience and what we've been through in terms of our success at doing the work we do. There are many people who get beat up, who suffer, who are victimized, and then they sit down to write and they write crap.

Jules Feiffer

#34. I want to write. I've already told my mother: That's what I want to do-write. No answer the first time. Then she asks, Write what? I say, Books, novels. [ ... ] She's against it, it's not worthy, it's not real work, it's nonsense. Later she said, A childish idea.

Marguerite Duras

#35. I'm trying to figure out how to record at home because I have a tiny house and a seven-year-old and my wife also works at home. So I can't work in the house because she's trying to write, so I pitched a tent in the backyard. I'm literally trying to record in the tent.

Matt Berninger

#36. It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.

Junot Diaz

#37. Great work doesn't make me jealous; it makes me want to work.

Glen Hirshberg

#38. Years ago, when I was writing westerns, other writers who were friends of mine wanted me to collaborate with them. And it just didn't work.

Gary Paulsen

#39. I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment.

William Zinsser

#40. In New York and L.A., there is sort of that silent competition to be on the cutting edge of something. You end up having a conversation with how the world receives your work, especially if you are writing narrative, not fiction. Sometimes it is an awkward conversation. It's like group therapy.

Sloane Crosley

#41. Sometime really good writing does you a disservice as an actor. Because you can get lazy. It's doing a lot of the work for you. I guess that's good. But at the same time with material that's not so good, you have to be more inventive, because no thought has been applied to it.

Meryl Streep

#42. One of the accidental joys of my writing life has been that I've had some lovely, surprisingly good fortune with readers, and I've brought readers to my dad's work. I can't tell you the joy that gives me. Because my father's work was masterful.

Andre Dubus III

#43. There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.

Gudjon Bergmann

#44. You need to work at the craft of songwriting, but not only the craft. When I see people working both on themselves and the craft, and they combine those things ... I just go, That's just fabulous.

Fred Eaglesmith

#45. An Authorpreneur focuses on establishing one's brand to the consumer using different avenues to promote their work.

Geraldine Solon

#46. Treading water, a little dog-paddling - it's a lot like writing a novel, Clark," the dump reader told his former student. "It feels like you're going a long way, because it's a lot of work, but you're basically covering old ground - you're hanging out in familiar territory.

John Irving

#47. Writing is easy, good writing is hard and excellent writing is hard work.

G.H. Guzik

#48. I like photography and writing and travel, so I have a lot of cerebral occupations. I am going to become a sailor and do a world tour on my yacht if I don't get any more work.

Audrey Tautou

#49. The good thing about being a writer is that you don't need anything except for a laptop. You can really do your own work and if you're not manically compelled to write all the time before you do it professionally, it's probably not a business for you anyway.

Thomas Lennon

#50. Great steps in human progress are made by things that don't work the way philosophy thought they should. If things always worked the way they should, you could write the history of the world from now on. But they don't, and it is those deviations from the normal that make human progress.

Charles Kettering

#51. The situation is not good with the record companies. It's just not working out, so I don't plan to record until it's straightened out. In the meantime I'm happy doing my movies and writing the music for the theme songs, whether I sing them or not.

Irene Cara

#52. No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.

Julia Cameron

#53. Writing a song is almost like cheating-writing because you don't have to finish your sentences, you don't have to use any punctuation, no one's going to edit your work. It's so wide open. People just grunt and that's a song. You can kind of do anything.

Mirah

#54. All great movies have one thing in common: every frame of every scene could stand alone as a work of art. Why should it be different in a book?

Sean Hinn

#55. I don't really listen to rock music anymore. But were I to write a song that sounded like it could be a rock song, I'd probably give it to the Pornographers, and I'd be excited to try to make it work.

Dan Bejar

#56. I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word. I compare it to the work of a stone cutter - chipping away at the raw material until it's just right, or as right as you can get it.

Harriet Doerr

#57. If you were to write down all the possible ways to motivate people to do better work, friendly praise would have to come near the head of your list.

Hannah Whitall Smith

#58. If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.

Salman Rushdie

#59. If this whole writing thing doesn't work out, I'll be getting right back on the pole.

Diablo Cody

#60. He had great respect for a novelist like James. Pound knew about the concentration of energies required to write novels and also knew that he did not have such qualities, that his inspirations came more in flashes than in sustained work. Writing prose was difficult,

John Tytell

#61. It can be done. It will be done.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#62. Whether the task is writing, design, or hanging a picture straight, it is obvious that we do our best work when healthy, rested, refreshed, alert, and eager to do the job for its own sake.

Jeffrey Zeldman

#63. I found the structure of writing a screenplay harder than the structure of writing an essay. But it was definitely challenging to force myself to sit and write. I'm not used to having to force myself to work.

Judy Greer

#64. I work eight hours a day, but I'm not writing all that time. I'm thinking, editing, looking something up. Thinking is what I do a lot of.

Barbara Taylor Bradford

#65. I always felt my writing could benefit from the attention of established writers. I knew my work could grow and be better.

Uwem Akpan

#66. There are always dimensions, and the way they get expressed is through the writing and the actors and the director you get to work with on that day. But there are always dimensions, outside of really basic stuff for very young people where it needs to be very clear.

Ben Mendelsohn

#67. Just because something DOES NOT work, that doesn't mean it CANNOT.

Sarah M. Cradit

#68. So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

Al Yankovic

#69. I was writing fiction in my 20s but in a pretty undisciplined way - late at night, maybe, after I'd peeled myself from the walls of a nightclub and crawled home along the gutters. But I slowly became more serious and more devout in my work, and I fell seriously in love with the short story form.

Kevin Barry

#70. If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#71. At first I was blogging everyday, but I don't do that anymore. It varies; sometimes I'll write these little essays and other times political commentaries. Other times it'll just be new work that I'm doing.

Stephen Vincent Benet

#72. Loneliness sometimes gives me a quantity of creativeness - you're drinking another glass of wine and you're feeling even worse. Art doesn't work without pain; art also exists for compensating pain.

Till Lindemann

#73. Writing a story, you understand, is not done by consensus. But we do learn from each other, and we remind ourselves how important this work we're doing is.

John Dufresne

#74. I find writing really hard, but then, every author I know finds writing really hard work.

Nicola Cornick

#75. I want to be remembered as an actor who put in some good work in the beginning of his career, even better work at the end of his career and slowly, successfully made the transition into writing and directing.

Jonathan Brandis

#76. Only a writer would slap a bumper sticker on her car that read, 'Seriously, I'd rather be working'.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#77. Normally I work out a general summary of what I mean to do, then start writing, and the details can be different from my anticipation. So there is considerable flow, but always within channels.

Piers Anthony

#78. When I say "work" I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.

Margaret Laurence

#79. She wanted me to remember that pleasure is political
for the capacity to relax and play renews the spirit and makes it possible for us to come to the work of writing clearer, ready for the journey. (bell hooks about Toni Cade Bambara)

Bell Hooks

#80. When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.

C.S. Lewis

#81. Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories.

Don Roff

#82. 'Rolling Stone' had started something called 'Outside,' and since I was one of two people in the office that liked going outside, I was pegged to work on it. The concept of the magazine was simple: literate writing about the out-of-doors. I jumped at the opportunity.

Tim Cahill

#83. The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime twittering - anon Twitter has raised writing to a new low.

Samuel Goldwyn

#84. It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days.

Alan Furst

#85. Whatever is going on in your life when you're writing has to somehow seep into your work.

Kate Bush

#86. I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.

Marvin Bell

#87. With my writing, because I live it, I have to be consumed by it, and that means you have to forget your other life, which is constantly pulling you from your work.

Paullina Simons

#88. I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me.

Georgia O'Keeffe

#89. Martial (the main character of LOCUS SOLUS) has a very interesting conception of literary beauty: the work must contain nothing real, no observations about the world or the mind, nothing but completely imaginary constructions. These are in themselves ideas from an extrahuman world.

Pierre Janet

#90. And dialogue, I'm good at it, and it's because it's the only thing you have to work with in TV writing.

Maria Semple

#91. I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

Wilkie Collins

#92. Writing is rewriting... If you fall in love with the vision you want of your work and not your words, the rewriting will become easier.

Nora DeLoach

#93. You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.

Isaac Asimov

#94. Writing is like anything - baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails. The more you work on it, the better you get. But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails.

Betsy Byars

#95. That's how writing works, at least for me: even the stuff that doesn't work out gets funneled into the stuff that does work out.

John Green

#96. You've got to work. It's about structure. It's about discipline. It's all these deadly things that your school teacher told you you needed ... You need it.
Jo speaking to Charlie Rose re: writing

J.K. Rowling

#97. In the industry, trying out new genres is not always encouraged but what I've discovered is that as a writer, a jaunt outside my comfort zone generally brings new skills to the main body of my work.

Sara Sheridan

#98. I still write what I need to write - but I can't deny that something has changed when I think about sending work out. Maybe it's just growing older and feeling more responsible to the world.

Denise Duhamel

#99. Start early and work hard. A writer's apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he's almost ready to begin. That takes a while.

David Eddings

#100. That day, that day when I can gaze at the sea
both of us calm
and I, trusting, having poured my whole heart into my Life Work ... when death
black waves!
no longer courts me and I can smile, constantly, at everything because, my bones, there will be so little of myself left to give it.

Juan Ramon Jimenez