Creative Process Quotes

It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world.

~ Sanober Khan

to be a poet meansto live with a permanent wound forever susceptibleto either the shade of the skyor someone's eyes.

~ Sanober Khan

A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer's block.

~ Ryan Lilly

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common.

~ Lawrence Wright

Dialogue is not just quotation. It is grimaces, pauses, adjustments of blouse buttons, doodles on a napkin, and crossings of legs.

~ Jerome Stern

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you

~ Neil Gaiman

Explore your inner creative genius through the medium you love and enjoy the journey!

~ Ken Poirot

Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong—in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: make good art. . . . Someone on the internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before: make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and it doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: make good art.

~ Neil Gaiman

The if I had time lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born - without the luxury of time.

~ Julia Cameron

[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, What are my big scenes? and then get every drop of juice out of

~ P.g. Wodehouse

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and fall into a vortex as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her scribbling suit consisted of a black woollen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally, to ask, with interest, Does genius burn, Jo? They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on; in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew; and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew; and not until the red bow was seen gayly erect upon the gifted brow, did any one dare address Jo.

~ Louisa May Alcott

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself into the yawning gulf, as the soldier flings himself into the enemy's trenches, and if, once in this crater, he does not work like a miner on whom the walls of his gallery have fallen in; if he contemplates difficulties instead of overcoming them one by one ... he is simply looking on at the suicide of his own talent.

~ Honoré De Balzac

A child s a special possession from God.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I've had to keep defining and defending myself as a writer every single day of my adult life -- constantly reminding and re-reminding my soul and the cosmos that I'm very serious about the business of creative living, and that I will never stop creating, no matter what the outcome, and no matter how deep my anxieties and insecurities may be.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

For any creative thought to be contagious, it must first be worthy of a sneeze.

~ Ryan Lilly

Regarding the creative: never assume you're the master, only the student. Your audience will determine if you're masterful.

~ Don Roff

The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things.

~ Dorothy L. Sayers

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

~ Jacqueline Patricks

After passionately nursing this idea for about an hour, I suddenly had another idea: no I wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't make an entire city out of cereal boxes in the basement. The moment I had this second thought, I knew this was the real one.

~ Miranda July

MFA in a Box is designed to help you to find the courage to put truth into words and to understand that writing is a life-and-death endeavor — but that nothing about a life-and-death endeavor keeps it from being laugh-out-loud funny.

~ John Rember

Oh God, for a few who will love me in tiny ways every single day of my flashing existence. For a mere one or two who will treat me like the trash I am, who will love the smell of garbage and rummage through the bin of my failings to find the wrapped cheeseburger they can do without but consider long enough to get their taste buds used to the idea. Oh for a melodious tongue to sing me a song about french fries.

~ Chila Woychik

Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see creator as the literal term for artist. I am suggesting you take the term creator quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.

~ Julia Cameron

The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got.

~ Julia Cameron

Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled with leather novels and chai tea.

~ Amy Poehler

Your experiences are the foundation for your story, your imagination takes it from there.

~ J.r. Young

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just THERE. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.

~ Roger Ebert

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

~ Stephen Fry

Why start if you are going to do a half-assed job anyway?

~ Monika Zands

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the

~ Will Self

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

~ Robert Mckee

- But Abraham, you mean I'm supposed to make stuff up !?!?- You are creators, you make stuff up all the time!

~ Esther Hicks