Writing Quotes

. . . [E]very single writer I met likened writing for television to one thing--laying track for an incoming speeding train. The story is the track and you gotta keep laying it down because of the train. That train is production. You keep writing, you keep laying track down, no matter what, because the train of production is coming toward you--no matter what. Every eight days, the crew needs to being to prepare a new episode--find locations, build sets, design costumes, find props, plan shots. And every eight days after that, the crew needs to film a new episode. Every eight days. Eight days to prep. Eight days to shoot. Eight days, eight days, eight days, eight days. Which means every eight days, that crew needs a brand-new script. And my job is to damn well provide them with one. Every. Eight. Days. That train of production is a'coming. Every eight days that crew on that soundstage better have something to shoot. Because the worst thing you can do is halt or derail production and cost the studio hundreds of thousands of dollars while everyone waits. That is how you go from being a TV writer to being a failed TV writer.

~ Shonda Rhimes

Wasting time on timing stuff is a good way to save time from being wasted on other pointless activities like writing, reading, and sleeping.

~ Will Advise

We write to share the deepest heart-talk of our souls.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

[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

Who will teach me to write? a reader wanted to know.The page, the page, that eternal blankness, the blankness of eternity which you cover slowly, affirming time's scrawl as a right and your daring as necessity; the page, which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity; the page, which you cover slowly with the crabbed thread of your gut; the page in the purity of its possibilities; the page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life's strength: that page will teach you to write.

~ Annie Dillard

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

What you should actually be trying to figure out is how to tell your story. The one that is every bit as unique to you as your fingerprints.This is the truly amazing feat because you are literally the only person capable of doing that. Only you know all the parts to your story and only you can pass it on for others to hear if you choose to.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

Inspiration is all around us. Don't let the brain limit the mind .

~ Lisi Harrison

The fact of the matter is that you should really stop concerning yourself with writing a book because anyone can write a book that totally sucks. There is nothing special about that.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

You can critique her writing, but not her lifestyle.

~ Lisi Harrison

I have found so many angels trapped inside undisputed jargon that I find myself digging at the words, in order to release them, from the books that unfairly captured their soul.

~ Shannon L. Alder

The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.

~ John Gardner

Writing is a profession that has no real career structure and your best advice when you hit a difficulty is probably going to come from another writer one or two rungs on the career ladder ahead of you.

~ Sara Sheridan

Theoretically there's no reason one should get [writer's block], if one understands that writing, after all, is only writing, neither something one ought to feel deeply guilty about nor something one ought to be inordinately proud of.

~ John Gardner

When someone gives you advice, just ask them to give it in writing and they will either keep mum or will run from there.

~ Amit Kalantri

Story should be a descent -- the feeling that there is an intense gravity to the narrative that draws you down, down, down.

~ Chuck Wendig

[What Rushdie took away from reading Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum]: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping like sand, through our fingers.

~ Salman Rushdie

To be a better cook, cook more. To be a better writer, read more.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Saepa stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturas. (Turn the stylus [to erase] often if you would write something worthy of being reread.)

~ Horace

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

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

~ Steven Pressfield

Wait, that’s your idea? That’s your expert advice? You’re going to tell these novelists to just keep going? You’re going to tell these honest, earnest writers: You gotta have faith? Those are George Michael lyrics, asshole. If they wanted that pep talk, they could just hang out inside a mall elevator.

~ Karen Russell

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…)A good novel editor is invisible.

~ Terri Windling

The lady who works in the grocery store at the corner of my block is called Denise, and she's one of America's great unpublished novelists. Over the years she's written forty-two romantic novels, none of which have ever reached the bookstores. I, however, have been fortunate enough to hear the plots of the last twenty-seven of these recounted in installments by the authoress herself every time I drop by the store for a jar of coffee or can of beans, and my respect for Denise's literary prowess knows no bounds. So, naturally enough, when I found myself faced with the daunting task of actually starting the book you now hold in your hands, it was Denise I turned to for advice.

~ Dave Gibbons

don’t be like so many writers,don’t be like so many thousands ofpeople who call themselves writers,don’t be dull and boring andpretentious, don’t be consumed with self-love.the libraries of the world haveyawned themselves tosleepover your kind.don’t add to that.don’t do it.

~ Charles Bukowski

I write because it's the only thing I love that always loves me back.

~ Crystal Woods

You tend to write because your heart holds million unspoken words, writing is your only way to heal your own soul!

~ Raouf Ayoub

Every person has a story, every person has a wound that he or she seeks to heal.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

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

If writers write not just with paper and ink or a word processor but with their own life's blood, then I think something like this is perhaps always the case. A book you write out of the depths of who you are, like a dream you dream out of those same depths, is entirely your own creation. All the words your characters speak are words that you alone have put into their mouths, just as every situation they become involved in is one that you alone have concocted for them. But it seems to me that nonetheless that a book you write, like a dream you dream, can have more healing and truth and wisdom in it at least for yourself than you feel in any way responsible for.

~ Frederick Buechner

Writing is more than just a method to tell stories. It’s a way to find healing, and to healing others.

~ M. Kirin

Write about a terrible experience until you find value in having gone through it. Then you will appreciate every dark hour.

~ Jan Marquart

She’d always pictured her future self as a lone wolf traveling around the world, ensnaring romantic conquests and achieving her wildest and most ambitious goals. She didn’t think that at nineteen she would be so dependent on other people; she pictured herself as an autonomous and untouchable force that occasionally flitted back home to show off her new feathers before flying away to her life that was much more exciting than theirs.

~ Katie Neipris

Writing is 90% procrastination, 8% perspiration, and 6%biscuitNone of it is math.

~ Almney King

Personal opinion time: some of the bravest, strangest, coolest stories right now are being told in the young adult space. It's stuff that doesn't fly by tropes or adhere to rules -- appropriate, perhaps, since young adults tend to flick cigarettes in the eyes of the rules and don't play by social norms as much as adults do.

~ Chuck Wendig

I should walk away. That would be the right thing to do. It would be the smart thing. But I can't, because I'm Taylor Caldwell, the girl who cuts.

~ S. Elle Cameron

Speak up and speak clearly. I want to hear what you have to say because it matters. Let's listen to each other and respect one another's opinions. Although, they may be different, wisdom allows us to be responsible for our own feelings and actions.

~ Felicia Johnson

I refuse to give readers an uplifting faux experience engineered to comfort them and perpetuate the sociopolitical and economic status quo.Who died and made you Bertolt Brecht?

~ Chuck Palahniuk

There's nothing sexier than imaging myself as an Oxford comma getting unambiguously banged. Throw in a semicolon in between two closely related independent clauses, and a volcanic love of punctuation eruption is guaranteed.

~ Ella Dominguez

Thought for the day: Twitter...140 character limit...must be a great tool for fortune cookie writers...

~ E.a. Bucchianeri