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

~ Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron Creative Process Writing Writing Process

Writing is a way not only to metabolize life but to alchemize it as well. It is a way to transform what happens to us in our own experience. It is a way to move from passive to active. We may still be the victims of circumstance, but by our understanding those circumstances we place events within the ongoing context of our own life, that is, the life we own.

~ Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron Writing Writing Process

When we write from the inside out rather than the outside in, when we write about what most concerns us rather than about what we feel might sell, we often write so well and so persuasively that the market responds to our efforts.

~ Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron Marketing Writing Writing Process

I do not put in long hours at the keys - or very seldom. Instead, I snatch time. I write in the crannies of my life.

~ Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron Finding Time Time Writing Writing Process

He could not put down a word without suspecting that it might be the wrong one and that if he held back for another day the intermediate experience would provide the right one. There was no end to that, and Moon fearfully glimpsed himself as a pure writer who after a lifetime of absolutely no output whatsoever, would prepare on his deathbed the single sentence which was the distillation of everything he had saved up, and die before he was able to utter it.

~ Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard Writing Writing Process

Dialogues must appear as natural as if coming from effortless writing. It must not sweat. Your beloved readers must not sweat. But here am I, literally sweating, because my characters are literally talking dirty in a steamy sweaty and bloody scene.

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Ana Claudia Antunes Blood Bloody Crime Scene Crime Thriller Dialogues Effortless Effortless Mindfulness Hot Scene Presence Readers Readers And Writers Readership Scenes Steamy Romance Steamy Scenes Sweating Writing Writing Advice Writing How To Writing Mysteries Writing Myths Writing Process Writing Tips Writing To Produce Action

To unlock the writer's block is to keep writing until you can unknot the not. If you cannot, then put a can in the plot and unwrap it a lot!

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Ana Claudia Antunes Witer Writer S Block Writers And Writing Writers Block Writers On Writing Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

Attributing to another author, Writing a novel is like setting a goal and walking there in your sleep.

~ Karl Ove Knausgård

Karl Ove Knausgård Writing Writing Books Writing Process

I've found my productive-writing-to-screwing-around ratio to be one to seven. So, for every eight hour day of writing, there is only one good productive hour of work being done. The other seven hours are preparing for writing: pacing around the house, collapsing cardboard bxes for recycling, reading the DVD extras pamphlet from BBC Pride & Prejudice, getting snacks lined up for writing, and YouTubing toddlers who learned the 'Single Ladies' dance. I know. Isn't that horrible? So, basically, writing this piece took me the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

~ Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling Writing Writing Process

Write your own part. It's the only way I've ever gotten anywhere. It is much harder work, but sometimes you have to take destiny into your own hands. It is much harder work, but sometimes you have to take destiny into your own hands. It forces you to think about what your strengths really are, and once you find them, you can showcase them, and nobody can stop you.

~ Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling Career Women Writing Writing Process

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.

~ Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson Authors Creative Writing Writing Process

You must write as if each word is a precious drop of blood, or a tear to be saved in a glass phial.

~ Chloe Thurlow

Chloe Thurlow Writing Writing Process

A writer cannot really grasp what he has written. It is not like a building or a sculpture, it cannot be seen whole. It is only a kind of smoke seized and printed on a page.

~ James Salter

James Salter Writing Writing Philosophy Writing Process

His world was small, an illiterate county seat, a backward state, though from it he fashioned something greater, far greater perhaps than he ever knew. A writer cannot really grasp what he has written. It is not like a building or a sculpture; it cannot be seen whole. It is only a kind of smoke seized and printed on a page.

~ James Salter

James Salter Creating Writing Writing Process

Getting started on writing a book isn't as hard as it sounds. You don't need a plan and an outline. In fact, all you need are two things: time and one idea.

~ Natasha Lester

Natasha Lester Writers On Writing Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

Nobody whispers it in your ear. It is like something you memorized once and forgot. Now it comes back and rips away your breath. You find and finger a phrase at a time; you lay it down cautiously, as if with tongs, and wait suspended until the next one finds you: Ah yes, then this; and yes, praise be, then this.

~ Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard Writing Writing Process

Now the thing is no longer a vision: it is paper.

~ Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard Writing Writing Process

Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right - as right as you can, anyway - it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it. If you're very lucky...more will want to do the former than the latter.

~ Stephen King

Stephen King Criticism Writing Writing Process

The worst part of writing is meeting all these great new characters and having no one to talk about (the adventures you share with) them.

~ Claudia Bakker

Claudia Bakker Characters Characters In Books Characters In Novels Writing Writing Books Writing Process

A simple word or phrase on a blank sheet of paper gathers momentum as I wonder at what it could mean, where it could take place, why, and what if? . . . And then, I write.

~ Tyrean Martinson

Tyrean Martinson Writing Writing Process

Writing as a creative art flourishes only when there are no rules. Rules stifle you from entering the silent and forbidden spaces where the core of the story is waiting to be revealed.

~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

Gloria D. Gonsalves Writing Writing Advice Writing Process Writing Tips

Stay within the confines of your chosen topic. If you start to stray away from your topic and find an urge to showcase everything that you know, resist that urge. Remember that you are writing a book, not the book.

~ Gudjon Bergmann

Gudjon Bergmann Writing Writing A Book Writing Advice Writing Process

Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don’t recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It’s none of their business. All they’re trying to do is tell you what they’re like, and what you’re like -- what’s going on -- what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don’t tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming another third of it spent in telling lies. [Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness]

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin Scifi Writing Writing Process

It is imperative that your work habits from school do not make their way into your book writing process. I am talking about the practice of typing the last words just before the deadline every time you would hand in an assignment, a paper, or even a thesis. Your book needs time to mature, and you must allow yourself the luxury of rewriting and editing until you are satisfied.

~ Gudjon Bergmann

Gudjon Bergmann Writing Writing Books Writing Process

Sometimes when I am writing, I feel as though I were not reliving the events I describe here, but rather living them. That there is no distance at all, and that I do not know how my story will end. It is an extraordinary sensation, since, of course, I know only too well how it will all end.

~ Anita Shreve

Anita Shreve Writing Writing Process

Successful journals break the deadlock of introspective obsession

~ Alexandra Johnson

Alexandra Johnson Journaling Writing Writing Process

When you write a manuscript, it feels like being in a relationship with someone. You'll hate it, get bored with it, be pissed of, like you just want to break up. But, just like any relationship, you will fall in love again and again, like you don't want to lose it.

~ Alvi Syahrin

Alvi Syahrin Manuscript Manuscript Quotes Motivation Writers Life Writers On Writing Writers Quotes Writing Writing Advice Process Writing Novels Writing Process

Writing to impress others is the surest path to pretentious mediocrity.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Katerina Stoykova Klemer Creativity And Attitude Writing Writing Process

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

Amy Poehler Creative Process Writing Writing Process

The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.

~ Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf Writing Writing Process

Sometimes in fiction you had to mute reality in order to make it seem more believable.

~ Adam Langer

Adam Langer Writing Writing Process

The movementOf the body isWhere poetryBegins

~ Clint Catalyst

Clint Catalyst Poetry Poetry Quote Poetry Quotes Life Writing Writing Process Writing Process Creative Process

There is a difference between fresh and weird. You never want to throw your reader out of the story. Keep it fresh but natural.

~ Darynda Jones

Darynda Jones Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

If you don’t make time for writing, writing won’t make time for you.

~ Sandra Elaine Scott

Sandra Elaine Scott Writing Writing Advice Writing Craft Writing Philosophy Writing Process

Writings are thoughts in a defined moment.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Lailah Gifty Akita Moments Quote Positive Thought Read And Write Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

Writing is easy. Saying something that would make a difference is the task.

~ Aleksandra Ninkovic

Aleksandra Ninkovic Hard Work Making A Difference Writing Writing Process

Humor is so subjective, not everyone is going to get what you are peddling. Others will be offended when what you meant no offense whatsoever. Those are the stakes. You have to be able to stand up for yourself and what you’ve written. Comedy pushes limits, makes people uncomfortable, and is a natural reaction to the environment. Otherwise, as I said, it is forced. Let it flow and give your characters permission to cross a line or two, but only if you can take the heat afterward.

~ Darynda Jones

Darynda Jones Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

A general is like a writer who wants to write a play, or a book, but whom the book itself, with the unexpected options that it reveals at one point, the impasse it presents at another, causes to deviate extensively from his preconceived plan.

~ Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust Writing Writing Process

I cannot tell you how important fresh, crisp writing is for an aspiring writer. Plot is great. The overall concept is super important. But the writing is what sells your work. It all boils down to the words you choose and the order in which you arrange them.

~ Darynda Jones

Darynda Jones Writing Writing Advice Writing Process

And as your writing evolves, what you need and get from it evolves.

~ Darynda Jones

Darynda Jones Advice For Writers Writing Writing Craft Writing Process
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