words are a border collie’s worst nightmare.

~ Thomas Lloyd Qualls

Thomas Lloyd Qualls Poems On Writing Poetry Words Writing Writing Process

I know now that the poem in my head, the one that pushed me to the page, begged me - or dared me to be born is almost never the poem that comes out. I suppose it’s like anything born of/with free will and the will to live: once I’ve given the seed, once the juices flow through any sort of birth canal and make it to the ambient air there will, at that point, be forces that come into play that are no longer entirely mine. To forget that each word is a life unto itself is to strangle it dead before it can even take a step.

~ Juan-Paolo Perre

Juan-Paolo Perre Poem Poetry The Life Of Words Words Writing Writing Process

The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have not discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.

~ Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand Healing Power Power Of Words Words Writing Process

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

~ Don Roff

Don Roff Expectations Finishing Revising Tips Tips On Writing Torture Words Writers Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

I'll never amount to anything—well anything my parents want, so instead I’ll end up puking and drinking till I’m blind drunk, It’s funny my mother says I hurt myself to spite her but she doesn’t know I hurt myself because I am, I am, I am a writer.

~ P.a. Bitez

P.a. Bitez Alcoholism Depression Expectations Writing Process

So what do you do when you are stuck?The first thing I do when I am stuck is pray. But I’m not talking about a quick, Help me Lord, Sunday’s a comin’ prayer. When I get stuck I get up from my desk to head for my closet. Literally. If I‘m at the office I go over to a corner that I have deemed my closet away from home. I get on my knees and remind God that this was not my idea, it was His…None of this is new information to God…Then I ask God to show me if there is something He wants to say to prepare me for what He wants me to communicate to our congregation. I surrender my ideas, my outline and my topic. Then I just stay in that quiet place until God quiets my heart…Many times I will have a breakthrough thought or idea that brings clarity to my message. . .Like you, I am simply a mouthpiece. Getting stuck is one way God keeps me ever conscious of that fact.

~ Andy Stanley

Andy Stanley Faith Inspiration Prayer Writing Life Writing Process

Book:Sharing of life and experiences with other people.This is lifetime notes for all generations.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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Life is a book. There are many pages to be written.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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He singled out aspects of Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on; kept each of these as poorly defined as Quality itself, but demonstrated them by the same class reading techniques. He showed how the aspect of Quality called unity, the hanging-togetherness of a story, could be improved with a technique called an outline. The authority of an argument could be jacked up with a technique called footnotes, which gives authoritative reference. Outlines and footnotes are standard things taught in all freshman composition classes, but now as devices for improving Quality they had a purpose. And if a student turned in a bunch of dumb references or a sloppy outline that showed he was just fulfilling an assignment by rote, he could be told that while his paper may have fulfilled the letter of the assignment it obviously didn’t fulfill the goal of Quality, and was therefore worthless.

~ Robert M. Pirsig

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Write, what you feel about. Feel, what you have written about.

~ Austin Penman

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Whenever I feel sad, I just take out my phone and listen to her laughter recorded in my online messenger.

~ Avijeet Das

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In a suspended psychic state, writers cull words and symbols from the mystical world of memory, imagination, and intuition.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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We write to embrace the sacred thoughts.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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WARNING: The production of spirit is a very delicate and dangerous procedure. It should be left to the professionals and under absolutely no circumstance be replicated.

~ S.a. Tawks

S.a. Tawks Dangerous Imagination Reading Spirit Warning Writing Writing Process

I wish my brain had an off switch. Maybe that way I could get some sleep.

~ Christy Hall

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

~ J.r. Young

J.r. Young Accountability Friends Writing Advice Writing Process

Always being myself and my salve, which is life. I’m not lonely, if that’s what it seems like. Always writing things down.

~ Chris Campanioni

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Writing is daydreaming with ink.

~ Liana Brooks

Liana Brooks Dream Writing Writing Process

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

~ Lawren Leo

Lawren Leo Advice Dream Inspiration Psychic Vision Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

In the space of solitude, a writer attempts to remember how they became whom they are but nobody’s memory is up to this demanding task. No matter how much a person harrows the fertile lanes of memory, some memories are lost by the passage of time, psychological defense mechanisms screen other memories from detection, the ephemeral character of other memories are invariably to elusive to arrest with reciprocal language.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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So much of a novelist’s writing … takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the word appears on paper. We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them.

~ Graham Greene

Graham Greene Memory Novelist The Unconscious Writing Process

You story must be best told by you. Your experience is a sacred life.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

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The act of writing is a contemplative vision quest, a somber expedition of discovery that requires the writer to subordinate their ego in order to travel in soulful solitude towards a desirable personal haven of rejuvenating enlightenment. Writing for personal growth entails unconditionally surrendering oneself to the struggle of tearing their sense of self apart. It demands the solemn willpower to dissect and analyze the fissures of a self-absorbent soul one layer at a time.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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Talking to oneself is a recognized means to learn, in fact, self-speak may be the seed concept behind human consciousness. Private conversation that we hold with ourselves might represent the preeminent means to provoke the speaker into thinking (a form of cognitive auto-stimulation), modify behavior, and perhaps even amend the functional architecture of the plastic human brain. Writing out our private talks with oneself enables a person to “see” what they think, a process that invites reflection, ongoing thoughtful discourse with the self, and refinement of our thinking patterns and beliefs. Internal sotto voice conversations with our private-self provide several advantages, but most people find it difficult to maintain self-speak for an extended period. Internal dialogue must compete with external distractions. Writing allows a person to resume a personal dialogue where they left off before interrupted by outside stimuli. A written disquisition also provides a permanent record that a person can examine, amend, supplement, update, or reject.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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Today I will find something beautiful.Delicate pink blossoms on a cherry tree.The dove resting near the lemon buds.Sunbeams smiling from sky to earth.Smiling on me.Creating in BREATHE IN

~ Eileen Granfors

Eileen Granfors Beauty Goals Gratitude Inspirational Quotes Writing Process

Whether pleasant or dismal, the past is always a safe territory, if only because it is already experienced, and the species' capacity to revert, to run backward -especially in its thoughts or dreams, since there we are safe as well - is extremely strong in all of us, quite irrespective of the reality we are facing. Yet this machinery has been built into us, not for cherishing or grasping the past (in the end, we don't do either), but more for delaying the arrival of the present - for, in other words, slowing down a bit the passage of time.

~ Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky Past Present Writing Process

...the answer is not in the damn blank page - it's in the days or years before and you have to dredge it up - exhume the past again ...

~ John Geddes

John Geddes Blank Pages Experience Memories Past Writing Craft Writing Process

She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day after day would lead to mental lethargy, that her writing would suffer from too much happiness, that she needed a balanced life with down days and miseries to keep the sharp edge on her work. But the idea that an artist needed to suffer to do her best work was a conceit of the young and inexperienced. The happier she grew, the better she wrote.

~ Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz Happiness Fulfillment Desire Starving Artist Suffering Writing Writing Process

Once they got into the idea of seeing directly for themselves they also saw there was no limit to the amount they could say. It was a confidence building assignment too, because what they wrote, even though seemingly trivial, was nevertheless their own thing, not a mimicking of someone else’s.

~ Robert M. Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig Confidence Nothing To Say Practice Writers Writing Craft Writing Process

It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.

~ Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith Confidence Writing Writing Process

To find the courage to keep writing after constant failure is awesomeness. Winning is eminent.

~ Sereda Aleta Dailey

Sereda Aleta Dailey Affirmation Courage Failure Winning Writing Writing Process

At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that o

~ William Faulkner

William Faulkner Advice Craft Craftsmanship Creative Writing Learning By Doing Talent Training Trial And Error Writing Writing Process

The truth is that writing is simply not reliable. You can't count on it to be there just because you've made some space for it. In fact, making space might make it disappear. You tell yourself you can't write in the middle of your daily life, with all its distractions and commitments, and when you finally clear the decks, light off for someplace scenic or at least private, you sit there completely paralyzed. You have devoted yourself to writing, but it has not returned your devotion. If writing were a person, you would be in an abusive relationship. The healthy thing to do would be to get a restraining order and shut it right out of your heart.

~ Kim Addonizio

Kim Addonizio Advice Writing Writing Process

[When asked for her advice to aspiring writers] Run! Just kidding. Sort of. Really, I think the best advice I can give is to wait for the book that compels you to write it-- the one that you eat, sleep, and breathe. If you try to force yourself to create an epic story, you will feel the ensuing drudgery quite acutely-- and worse, your readers will feel it too. Conversely, if you wait for the book that won't leave you alone until you finish it, your readers will feel that energy and it will make it difficult for them to put the book down until they have finished it!

~ Kealohilani

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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

Jessie Snow Advice Advice For Writers Working Writing Writing Process

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams.

~ James Hampton

James Hampton Advice Creative Process Writing Process

To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say: 'Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a labourer in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy almost all your energies.' I do not recommend this course of action to everyone, but only to those who suffer from the disease which Mr Krutch diagnoses. I believe that, after some years of such an existence, the ex-intellectual will fin that in spite of is efforts he can no longer refrain from writing, and when this time comes his writing will not seem to him futile.

~ Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell Advice Inspirational Writing Writing Process

Writing a memoir is a holistic method of learning and healing by placing responsibility for personal transformation on the spiritual authority of the self. Writing a person’s life story is useful to gain a comprehensive understanding regarding a person’s maturation, distinctive stages of personal development, and the influences provided by their family and society. The writing processes also serves as a catharsis for painful personal events that a person seeks to integrate into their transmuting being. Writing our personal story, we discover new dimensions of our being.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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The night before a deadline, I usually am in desperate need of a back rub. And new wrists. And candy. And little mice to secretly finish the job while I am sleeping.

~ Christy Hall

Christy Hall Humor Humorous Writers Writers On Writing Writing Writing Life Writing Process

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

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