Writing Process Quotes

“There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing... I am a recording instrument... I do not presume to impose “story” “plot” “continuity”... Insofar as I succeed in Direct recording of certain areas of psychic process I may have limited function... I am not an entertainer...”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“Well, writing novels is incredibly simple: an author sits down…and writes.

Granted, most writers I know are a bit strange.

Some, downright weird.

But then again, you’d have to be.

To spend hundreds and hundreds of hours sitting in front of a computer screen staring at lines of information is pretty tedious. More like a computer programmer. And no matter how cool the Matrix made looking at code seem, computer programmers are even weirder than authors.”
― Christopher Hopper

“In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.'

I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

“When an idea strikes, I allow it to dance within my mind and heart, letting it ripen organically before it takes shape in words.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“I used to be afraid about what people might say or think after reading what I had written. I am not afraid anymore, because when I write, I am not trying to prove anything to anyone, I am just expressing myself and my opinions. It’s ok if my opinions are different from those of the reader, each of us can have his own opinions. So writing is like talking, if you are afraid of writing, you may end up being afraid of talking”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.”
― Haruki Murakami

“In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Jewel Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction

“Writing is the thing that props me up.”
― Horton Foote

“I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling ... I wrote every day, at home, in the office, whether I felt like it or not, I just did it.”
― Stephen J. Cannell

“Writing starts with living.

—Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing”
― L.L. Barkat

“Have you ever pondered the miracle of popcorn? It starts out as a tiny, little, compact kernel with magic trapped inside that when agitated, bursts to create something marvelously desirable. It’s sort of like those tiny, little thoughts trapped inside an author’s head that―in an excited explosion of words―suddenly become a captivating fairy tale!”
― Richelle E. Goodrich

“I once heard a filmmaker say that in order to be truly creative a person must be in possession of four things: irony, melancholy, a sense of competition, and boredom.”
― Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry

“Stories are the collective wisdom of everyone who has ever lived. Your job as a storyteller is not simply to entertain. Nor is it to be noticed for the way you turn a phrase. You have a very important job--one of the most important. Your job is to let people know that everyone shares their feelings--and that these feelings bind us. Your job is a healing art, and like all healers, you have a responsibility. Let people know they are not alone. You must make people understand that we are all the same.”
― Brian McDonald, The Golden Theme: How to Make Your Writing Appeal to the Highest Common Denominator

“I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry.”
― John Fowles

“On the Writing Process:

"When in doubt, take it out.,”
― Barbara DaCosta, Resort to Murder

“It's all mine, it's all sacred.”
― Jamie Weise

“So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book's form hardened.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together.”
― Darlene Craviotto, An Agoraphobic's Guide to Hollywood: How Michael Jackson Got Me Out of the House

“Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.”
― David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto

“Don’t start right off writing the ‘Great American Novel’, that's too much pressure and you'll get disappointed; start with porn, it’s fun and a good way to get your feet wet.”
― scavola

“I still suspect that most people start out with some kind of ability to tell a story but that it gets lost along the way. Of course, the ability to create life with words is essentially a gift. If you have it in the first place, you can develop it; if you don't have it, you might as well forget it.

But I have found that people who don't have it are frequently the ones hell-bent on writing stories. I'm sure anyway that they are the ones who write the books and the magazine articles on how-to-write-short-stories. I have a friend who is taking a correspondence course in this subject, and she has passed a few of the chapter headings on to me—such as, "The Story Formula for Writers," "How to Create Characters," "Let's Plot!" This form of corruption is costing her twenty-seven dollars.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“For most of the process, nothing but faith, fueled by your own stubbornness, will be pulling you along. The work that you've done on the book so far won't be much comfort, because so much of it will be insufferable crap, until the very last moment, when you figure out how to fix it and everything comes together.”
― Kristin Cashore

“I think of writing now as a long, tiring, pleasant seduction. The stories that you tell, the words that you use and refine, the characters you try to give life to are merely tools with which you circle around the elusive, unnamed, shapeless thing that belongs to you alone, and which nevertheless is a sort of key to all the doors, the real reason that you spend so much of your life sitting at a table tapping away, filling pages.”
― Elena Ferrante, La frantumaglia

“From the beginning, I did not intend to create a typical classic fantasy. I wanted an organic, harmonious world where my story could evolve. If this world needed gnomes, I put them in there. As for drevalyankas, pikshas, bolugs and other totally original creatures, they appeared there somehow by themselves in the course of events, and then just began "to get under the feet of the main heroes"...”
― Irina Lopatina

“Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it.”
― Anne Lamott

“Sifting through long forgotten stories of my childhood and writing on a daily basis, I became obsessed with following the threads of my memories, one leading to another. I start pulling on a single, seemingly trivial strand, only to discover it is attached to a longer strand; that one in turn is attached to an even bigger one. Sometimes, I find have tugged a whole, hidden tapestry of my past into view, one thread at a time.”
― Alice Bag

“You write until the rust comes out of the faucet and it's clear water. Then you write down the clear water.”
― Lin Manuel Miranda

“For days & nights, Phoolan related her extraordinary life via an interpreter. Recorded & transcribed, the typescript ran to 2000 pages. Writer Marie-Therese Cuny & I shaped this into a first draft. Then over several weeks in 1995, and with the aid of translator & journalist Vijay Kranti, Susanna & I read it back to Phoolan page by page. She would interrupt to correct errors, clear confusing contradictions, & add more recollections as they came to her. Phoolan signed her name at the bottom of each page, the only word she knew how to write.”
― Phoolan Devi, The Bandit Queen Of India: An Indian Woman's Amazing Journey From Peasant To International Legend

“I believe that you either love the work or the rewards. Life is a lot easier if you love the work.”
― Jane Smiley