Writing Process Quotes

“Great writing,
is a pregnancy in its thirty-fifth week

But true poetry,
lives the labor of the last second,

giving birth, in triumphant agony,
to the soft skin of new language”
― S.B. Joon, Not Knot Naught

“What Hemingway jovially called,
“bleeding behind a typewriter”,

implies quite wordlessly, the question,
“What would you open a vein for?”

A bleak answer,
produces each time that same blank page

A righteous one,
beats its heart right through the words”
― S.B. Joon

“What is creativity? Above all, it is play, the child's fresh spontaneity waiting to come forth in writing, or painting, or composing music, or any creative act.”
― Victoria Nelson, On Writer's Block

“Writing is a journey into sound, not excision.”
― Joe Moran

“Easy listening is hard(work) singing, easy reading is hard(work) writing”
― Joe Moran

“Writing your thoughts in a journal helps a lot, when you don't find the right people to talk to.”
― Avijeet Das

“There are those of us who, in order to endear ourselves to others and not exhaust them, must make ourselves scarce. But, we are the ones who get high marks.”
― Connor de Bruler, LONESOME TRAVELERS: the complete screenplay

“I get up in the morning every day because I want to read and see our voices on the page. I want to see them in libraries. I want to be writing stories about our community as a proud Chicano but also as a writer who has expertly crafted stories so that everybody will appreciate a different perspective. I want to show others that we have the ability to tell complex, innovative, even shockingly revolutionary stories that open people’s eyes.”
― Sergio Troncoso, Nobody's Pilgrims

“Rhythm is one of the subtlest of all instruments in the delicate work of conveying thought. But there is one general rule that is at once so simple and so near the heart of the whole matter, that I must at least mention it. This rule is to make the emphasez of sense and rhythm coincide. Plain men know by a sort of instinct where to hit hard ; they never say, " There is in my mind a desire which would be gratified if you were to transfer the hammer into my possession " ; they say, " Give me the hammer." This is true style. Someone has said, " All peasants have style," and philosophers cannot afford to get wholly out of touch with the fine economy of natural talk.”
― Brand Blanshard, On Philosophical Style

“Writing is a form of rebellion against reality. Rebel!”
― Don Roff

“Write till you drop dead.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“It is really is just true that I don't think of a reader when I'm writing. Maybe that's because for twenty years I was a poet and knew no one would read me.”
― Garth Greenwell

“Isn't it weird that we have characters? Aren't characters just weird? Naming characters is such a scam.”
― Garth Greenwell

“In all my years studying craft, reading books on writers by writers, standard genre tomes, Writing for the Soul of the World, is not just helpful with an incredible overview of craft, of thoughtful approaches to the writing life, and this idea of the "Universal Grammar of Story," but it is the most beautifully-designed, thoughtfully laid- out book on writing I have ever witnessed that includes an overall design based on many brilliant classical texts, long adored, used, and quoted for their brilliance, now the plot points of which are directly applied.”
― Mona Lisa Saloy, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

“It’s challenging to write away from the known and the familiar.”
― Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

“The perfect person does not exist. There is no woman or man you would meet who would make you write poetry.

So poets create imaginary persons who could play muses in their life. And inspire them to write. I have met many people in life, but I have always enjoyed being alone.”
― Avijeet Das

“The perfect person does not exist. There is no woman or man you would meet who would make you write poetry. 
 
So poets create imaginary persons who could play muses in their lives. And inspire them to write. I have met many people in life, but I have always enjoyed being alone.
 ”
― Avijeet Das

“I am a Writer, and I don't believe in propagating 'hate' for another human being because of religion, caste, creed, nationality, or faith. I am a Writer, and I believe in looking for the good in everyone I meet. I am a Writer, and I am in charge of creating a better world. I am a Writer, and I know that my words will be my legacy for all the future generations of homo sapiens.”
― Avijeet Das

“On Writing

The most important is that the writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the readers. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing god work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. Four twentieth century writers; Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers - common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit…. for an addict, the right to the drink or drug of choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because that’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jubs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter.

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the pages what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you, or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again, you must not come lightly to the blank page.

I am not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I’m not asking you to be politically correct or to cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn’t a popularity contest, it isn’t the moral olympics and it’s not church. But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car. If you take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.”
― Stephen King

“Eddie Murphy: Raw (1987) was released in theaters — unheard of for a standup concert film — and grossed over $50M. Behind the scenes there was some grumbling over Keenen’s credits as both a writer and producer. Murphy's then-manager, Richie Tienken, insists Keenen’s work on Raw was negligible.

“Eddie was working on his routine and was having a problem with a line,” says Tienken. “He talked to Keenen about it and Keenen basically said, ‘Well, why don’t you say it this way?’ And it worked. I said to Eddie, ‘That was really nice of Keenen to help you with that.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, he asked me for a co-writing credit.’ I was like, ‘What? It was one fucking line. This guy’s your friend.’ ” Tienken points out that comedians are always helping each other out with bits. He’s worked with comics such as Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, and Ray Romano. “They all helped each other. They didn’t ask for anything. I think I even went to Keenen and said, ‘You’ve got some pair of fucking balls asking him for that.’ ”

Chris Rock, who was just getting to know Eddie and Keenen around this time, recalled watching Eddie prepare for the shows on his Raw tour, batting around material with friends. Occasionally, Rock and others might help “tag” a joke. “I might have got a line in,” Rock told Marc Maron during a 2011 interview, referring to Raw. “That’s what friends are for, for tags. It’s only when they’re not your friends when they go, ‘I should get a writing credit for that tag.’ ”

Eddie and Keenen had a falling-out over all this, and one person close to the situation at the time says Arsenio Hall called Keenen afterward and said something to the effect of “You’re out and I’m in.” For his part, though, Eddie never publicly complained about Keenen’s contributions — or lack thereof — to Raw.”
― David Peisner, Homey Don't Play That!: The Story of In Living Color and the Black Comedy Revolution

“I don't have a social life, my ideas are my society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“The man who encompasses heaven and hell is a perfect man. But there are many heavens and more hells. The artist snatches fire from both. Surely the assassin feels no more intensely the lust of murder than the poet who depicts it in glowing words. The things he writes are as real to him as the things that he lives. But in his realm the poet is supreme. His hands may be red with blood or white with leprosy: he still remains king. Woe to him, however, if he transcends the limits of his kingdom and translates into action the secret of his dreams. The throng that before applauded him will stone his quivering body or nail to the cross his delicate hands and feet.”
― Viereck George Sylvester, The House of the Vampire

“Writing means finishing. You can’t improve, sell, captivate, or film what isn’t done.

So, finish the damn thing.”
― Don Roff

“When you experience writer's block, it means your creative child is throwing herself on the floor and refusing to cooperate. What do you do under these circumstances? Do you try to compel your child, kicking and screaming, to do what she would not? Do you send her to her room without dinner? Do you give her a number of logical reasons why she ought to
cooperate? Or do you try to find out why she doesn't want to in the first place?”
― Victoria Nelson, On Writer's Block

“Many people find it difficult to head straight for their fun; something in them refuses to play. The barrier is not lack of willpower (did you ever need willpower, as a child, to make mud pies?), but a stronger and much more seductive emotion: hatred. Specifically, hatred of self.
Loving oneself—as opposed to the narcissism of being
in love with oneself, with all its attendant insecurities—is one of the most difficult life tasks to master, and it is integrally related to the creative process.”
― Victoria Nelson, On Writer's Block

“The British novelist Graham Greene, for instance, whose novels include The End of the Affair and The Quiet American, was said to write 500 words a day, no more, which he would read over just before bed, relying on his dreams and sleeping mind to continue the work.”
― Rahul Jandial MD PhD

“Writing didn't used to be so miserable. God I miss my high school days. I could float my notebook open to an empty page and see possibility instead of frustration. When I took real pleasure in stringing words and sentences together just to see how they sounded. When writing was an act of sheer imagination, of taking myself away somewhere else, of creating something that was only for me. I miss writing before I met Athena Liu.”
― Rebecca F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Voice is everything. When the voice uses a style that's central to the story and is misunderstood by readers while wishing to use an alluring style for wide-reach; you can't have your cake and eat it too. Your vision's placed you in a small box. A box too small for an audience...”
― Charles Lee

“There's no pace. No quickness in his lines. There's no life. There's no sunlight...Each line must be full of a delicious little juice, flavor, they must be full of power. They must make you like to turn a page. Each line must be an entity onto itself. Writing must never be boring. It must not bore the reader, the writer. It must not bore anybody.”
― Charles Bukowski

“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft