Writing Quotes

...ugly interlopers threaten to choke off your story, depriving it of much-needed nutrition, sunlight and water. Identify and cut those weeds – the life-sucking adverbs, the shade-killing descriptions that don’t move the story forward, the crowding passive voice sentences.

~ Rob Bignell

A writer is like a gossiper who reveal secrets in a professional way.

~ Janice Valencia Capulso

I learn my world through writing.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

Description is the color in the canvas of your story.

~ M. Kirin

I became a writer when I learnt how to read -- how to listen; how to see, smell, touch, and feel. But not everyone who knows these things, not everyone who writes, or publishes, is a writer. Writing is in the soul.

~ Cindy Aime

TODAY IS A GREAT DAY TO MAKE ART.

~ M. Kirin

Do you think you’re not ‘ready’ to start that big story idea/project you’ve been thinking about forever?Jump in. Write anyway. The only way to make the impossible a reality is to take a leap of faith.

~ M. Kirin

All great stories began as shitty first drafts.There are no exceptions to this.

~ M. Kirin

Writing is an adventure. There is no way to know where it will take you, and what you will find. You could find success. You could find fans. Or, best of all, you could find yourself.

~ M. Kirin

Stop beating yourself up over all the days you didn’t work on your story. Focus on what you can do today.Sit down, and write.

~ M. Kirin

All great writers share one thing in common:They finished their books.

~ M. Kirin

Originality is not writing the story that has never been told, but writing the stories only you can tell.

~ M. Kirin

If you only had a year left to live, what book would you write?Now, write that book.

~ M. Kirin

The only way to overcome fear and doubt is to go against them.

~ M. Kirin

Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is beyond our reach. The best time to write is now, in the present.

~ M. Kirin

Every writer in the history of the world has been afraid to put words on the page. But we only remember those who overcame that fear.

~ M. Kirin

If you were waiting for a sign that you’re meant to be a writer…THIS IS IT.

~ M. Kirin

You were meant to write this book.

~ M. Kirin

You’re writing someone’s ‘future’ favorite book.

~ M. Kirin

If you wish to be a writer– then write, and don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’re on the ‘wrong’ path. You know where you’re going, and each word you write gets you a step closer.

~ M. Kirin

Write the words The FIve Senses on an index card and tack it to a bulletin board above your desk. You should have a bulletin board above your desk, if at all possible. Some place where you can tack images, quotes, postcards, scraps of thoughts and ideas that will help remind you of you you are and what you're doing.

~ Dani Shapiro

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere. While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual, like musicians or baseball players or politicians, have to get out there in front of people, writer who tend to be shy, get to stay at home and still be public.

~ Anne Lamott

To be a decent writer you must have both empathy and imagination. While these attributes aid your art, they can plague your soul. You don’t simply suffer your own sadness, experience your own longing and worry about your own wife and children, you are burdened with experiencing the emotional states of multitudes of others you don’t know.

~ M.j. Rose

I write flawed characters. Ones that do not always make the best decisions and are driven by ambition or lust. They are not black or white, they are in the large space that exists between.

~ Kevin James Breaux

With our writings, we can right the world.

~ Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

You cannot prove your worth by bylines and busyness.

~ Katelyn S. Bolds

Inspiration doesn't always come in chronological order.

~ Gina Marinello-Sweeney

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Researching books gets you into nothing but trouble.

~ Sara Sheridan

Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.

~ Sara Sheridan

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

For a writer it's a genuinely interesting and hopefully profitable era that makes a variety of books available to a variety of readers, extending both what's available and who gets to read it.

~ Sara Sheridan

I remember calling the council's cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful.

~ Sara Sheridan

It's part of a writer's job to be nosy about everything.

~ Sara Sheridan

I love writing, and just as much, I love undertaking research.

~ Sara Sheridan

The space where I write is in my head, I suppose.

~ Sara Sheridan

I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

~ Sara Sheridan

When a chap is passionate, the readership can sense it.

~ Sara Sheridan

Because his art is sucha difficult one, the writer is not likely to advance in the worldas visibly as do his neighbors: while his best friends from highschool or college are becoming junior partners in prestigiouslaw firms, or opening their own mortuaries, the writer may bestill sweating out his first novel.

~ John Gardner

Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partlynatural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, mostof which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity orincivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections);obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal tobelieve what all sensible people know is true); childishness (anapparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondnessfor daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of properrespect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for cryingover nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixationor both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking,smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness andneatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes);remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usualfeature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strangeadmixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness,the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelingsfor or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak ofcunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness,and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurableaddiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good.

~ John Gardner