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Writing Process Quotes

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Writing Process Quotes

“The creative process is a brave one. The word courage comes from the Latin and French words for heart, so keep coming back to loving kindness toward yourself as you write. Keep showing up with compassion for yourself, and you’ll get to where you’re wanting to go.”

“Actually "nerve" is one of the qualities it takes to tackle a first novel, the others being inflated ego and a gambler's sense of crazed bravado, all of which I felt imbued with, more or less, when I sat down to write my account of one woman's efforts to keep her ex-husband, a deranged fence jumper, out of her apartment and life.”

“A book can be a great friend, an advisor, a means to an end. A book reveals so much more than a movie would ever do. For example, when I watched the movie “The Hours” I was fascinated by the story. Just a year later I decided to read the book. And what was my surprise that I was even more dazzled by its writings than I was by the images… The images in my head were more vivid than the film could ever transport me to that feminine universe that the author was trying (and so successfully granted me) to conceive…”

“Well, writing novels is incredibly simple: an author sits down…and writes. Granted, most writers I know are a bit strange. Some, downright weird. But then again, you’d have to be. To spend hundreds and hundreds of hours sitting in front of a computer screen staring at lines of information is pretty tedious. More like a computer programmer. And no matter how cool the Matrix made looking at code seem, computer programmers are even weirder than authors.”

“Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters' arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event.”

“Both memory and imagination arrest time. By conjoining memory and imagination in forming storytelling’s language, style, and texture, writers’ negate the mind’s march into forgetfulness. We employ the full sprung use of memory and imagination to blunt our descent into nothingness.”

“That I isn't I anymore. It's someone else, the character who plays me, someone who's a better actor than I could ever be. I'm just the writer. Someone else is starring in my part. I remember him just well enough to try to write about him. A case of the negative sublime. I guess art's always after the fact. The real is imaginary, or imagined. Reconstitution, reconstruction, representation is all we're left with. Autobiography becomes biography in the end.”

“Dear music, I’m writing you this letter to thank you. Thank you for when you’re here, you catalyse my imagination. Thank you for this ineffable thing you bring, which makes the experience of writing so much better. Thank you for making real and palpable what is not. Thank you for being generous. Humans rarely are. You give breath to my characters. Moreover you give a mainspring to my tears, my laughs and my heart-bleedings. Actually, you give a purpose to Life, even if it’s just the one I created in my head, in the deepest abyss of my fantasies. Thank you for not judging me for that, by the way. Thank you because you make me wanna love. Life, people, nature… Everything. I can even say that sometimes, you make me fall in love of my own protagonists, my own scenes, my own jokes… I sound mad, I know, but believe me, I’m not. Well, not completely. Thank you for allowing me to travel without spending a cent. That’s pretty cool of you. I’ve even been in places never visited. Places only you and I will ever know. Thank you for your loyalty. I know I can rely on you every time, in every places. If I could live forever, I’d stay with you for a thousand year at least, until my dreams, as crazy and odd as they may be, became more authentic than my own reality. ‘Cause you know, reality sucks. Love, a girl who really likes you”

“Practical affairs task the human brain throughout the day. At night, the mind takes a deserved hiatus to consider the impossible and the absurd. In the carnage of our nighttime sleep tussles, the colored liqueurs of the true, the possible, fantasy, and the mythic beliefs become intermixed. Eyelets of the commonsensical and the imaginative are incorporated, and a new realism emerges out of our distilled perception of the veridical derived from the phenomenal realm of sensory reality and the philosophic world of ideals contained in the noumenal realm. The resultant psychobiologic vision immerses us in bouts of intoxicating inspiration and artistic stimulation and leaves us rickety boned and weakened after enduring a dreaded hangover of perpetual doubt laced with vagueness and insecurity.”

“The artistic creation of the poet, painter, photographer, and writer is a reflection of the artist’s inner world. The agenda of consciousness that spurs all forms of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but to portray its inward significance to the creator. A great poem, painting, photograph, and written composition fully express what the creator feels, in the deepest sense, about the distinctively depicted image that captured their imagination.”

“Making art requires a degree of intentionality. All works of art require a contemplative individual drawing from their bank of knowledge and immersion into the realms of memory and imagination in order to make an outward, communicative expression. Only human beings can draw upon the dialectical tension between memory and imagination to create artistic renderings.”

“Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it—and the way I do not find it. But it is from searching and not finding that what I did not know was born, and which I instantly recognize. Language is my human effort. My destiny is to search and my destiny is to return empty-handed. But—I return with the unsayable. The unsayable can only be given to me through the the failure of my language. Only when the construction fails, can I obtain what it could not achieve. And it is no use to try to take a shortcut and want to start, already knowing that the voice says little, starting straightaway with being depersonal. For the journey exists, and the journey is not simply a manner of going. We ourselves are the journey. In the matter of living, one can never arrive beforehand. The via crucis is not a detour, it is the only way, one cannot arrive except along it and with it. Persistence is our effort, giving up is the reward. One only reaches it having experienced the power of building, and, despite the taste of power, preferring to give up. Giving up must be a choice. Giving up is the most sacred choice of a life. Giving up is the true human instant. And this alone, is the very glory of my condition.”

“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can't put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”

“Don’t wait for the perfect line, just write. Let your thoughts spill onto the page in their raw form, then revise and refine. The editing process is your opportunity to catch human errors, rethink your choices, and decide what to keep, revise, or let go. Make sure your writing clearly communicates your intent. Be mindful of consistency and of the meaning every word brings to your lines. When receiving feedback or suggestions, don’t defend but reflect. You are the ultimate authority on your work, so take the time to thoughtfully consider input before accepting or rejecting it, and refine your piece accordingly. Know your strengths—but more importantly, know your limitations and where improvement is needed. Awareness of your limits is just as vital as recognizing your strengths.”

“I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations.”

“You’re in a story and the body writing it is an asshole. You had to know that, given the action. The story you’re in tells you like firing a gun…[I] had enough of it, of things happening one after another and no end in sight. Of reversals and falling in love and tragic flaws and by God if I see another motif in my business I will shoot it dead.”

“Celebrate your day of birthday as special day.Make a specific birthday wishes and write it down.You will be amazed about the power of pen and inner strength to accomplish the wishes. This will be a special gift for yourself on each birthday.”

“The gift of writing; natural flow of thoughts from the deepest heart.”