Writing Life Quotes - Page 11

I have only dwelt in my thoughts.

I realized I was officially a professional writer when all my plans began with "drink coffee" and ended with "take a nap.

In the middle of a novel, a kind of magical thinking takes over. To clarify, the middle of the novel may not happen in the actual geographical centre of the novel. By middle of the novel I mean whatever page you are on when you stop being part of your household and your family and your partner and children and food shopping and dog feeding and reading the post—I mean when there is nothing in the world except your book, and even as your wife tells you she’s sleeping with your brother her face is a gigantic semi-colon, her arms are parentheses and you are wondering whether rummage is a better verb than rifle. The middle of a novel is a state of mind. Strange things happen in it. Time collapses.

I hear you speak in songs of love, written for me only. And though I wander far too much, the path is rarely lonely.

I've tried to explain to people that I don't 'love' writing any more than I 'love' breathing. It's something I do and it's something I need. If I thought about it as a love/hate thing, I probably would have quit long ago. And then died.

Every day we live, we are writing our own secret book.

Life is about showing up, so is writing. That’s why I sit at my desk every day and dance my fingers across the keyboard

Novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming clutter Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five...

Ninety percent of writing is about listening.

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version.

The biggest thing for aspiring writers I would say is that writing is hard work. You can’t sustain the fantasy that it should somehow be otherwise for you because you are more special or more committed than other aspiring writers. You aren’t sitting down to be entertained by the gods or to entertain yourself. At times it can be a thrill and it feels more like play, but we are easily deceived by whatever pleasures or rewards writing can offer. Exhilarating work is still work. Is it work, or is it play? And the answer is “yes.” Does it sometimes feel like it comes easily or naturally? Yes. But did it really come easily? No. Writing doesn’t offer the rhythmic endorphin hit you get scrolling down the screen clicking on memes. Are you up for the work it is going to take to become successful as a writer? It is going to be harder than you think. You are submitting to forces and to a process that you can’t fully control. There is maybe a tiny bit more control if you self-publish, and there is no shame in doing that, but even that is going to introduce hard work. Probably harder than you think. If my next novel can’t find a home, I’m not above self-publishing it in some capacity and then moving on to the next project.

Being blind is the worst possible thing and asking me to read and write no more is torture.

Word count doesn't tell me when a story ends, my characters will tell me.

Open your soul and put it out there and dare the world to read it, ready to have them stomp on you and laugh, but ready to do it again the next day.

The longer the waiting, the longer the wondering.

Nothing makes you feel smaller than New York City...

Writing is transcendental. It is a form of expression, a form of art that you can take anywhere. That you can do anywhere. It poses the deepest questions in the universe. It generates emotion. It elicits empathy, promotes learning, creates an intellect you simply cannot get from any other medium. For me, it is air.

Upon reading, great stories by Great Spirits, the glorious inspiration penetrated our soul; we can’t help but to shed tears. It was a soul soothing and a deep spiritual awaken.

it was dawning on me how uphill a poet's path was, and I confessed to her that if I had to be the choice between being happy or being a poet, I'd choose to be happy.

I have occupied this idle, empty winter with writing a story. It has been written to please myself, without thought of my own vanity or modesty, without regard for other people's feelings, without considering whether I shock or hurt the living, without scrupling to speak of the dead.The world, I know, is changing. I am not indifferent to the revolution that has caught us in its mighty skirts, to the enormity of the flood that is threatening to submerge us. But what could I do? In the welter of the surrounding storm, I have taken refuge for a moment on this little raft, constructed with the salvage of my memory. I have tried to steer it into that calm haven of art in which I still believe. I have tried to avoid some of the rocks and sandbanks that guard its entrance.[from the introduction]

Like Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake and Robert B. Parker and oh so many others, I want to die with my boots on, facedown on my keyboard if possible, in the middle of a sentence.

If typos are God's way of keeping a writer humble, plot holes certainly keeps one on their knees.

I only wish to write.

I've never yet run out of ideas what to write about... only out of time to write it in.

Writing starts with living.—Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing

The writer has to die to give birth to the intellectual in the service of the wretched of the earth.

I have no talent; it's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room...

Writing a complete novel is time consuming, frustrating, nerve wrecking, and most of the time your work is under valued, under appreciated, and taken for granted. So why do authors do it? Because not writing at all, feels far worse.

Be Visionary ...

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

Authors, such as William Zinsser, Steven Pinker, Natalie Goldberg, and Stephen King, who have all written exquisite books on the art and craft of writing, have reminded me that it is the commitment to the craft that matters the most; the longing to get better and the countless hours of work that go into writing and rewriting. To them I am eternally grateful.

Writers write because they're writers. Because their imaginations boil up inside of them, waiting to overflow into the written word. Ordinary people have little capacity for unyielding imagination, whereas the natural-born writer can do little but yield to the tug of imagination. Ordinary people may practice for years to 'perfect' the challenge of writing; but the one destined to create and destroy with the stroke of a pen, the strike of the key, their wells of imagination shall never run dry.

A direct relationship exists between the caliber of the writing you read and the caliber of the writing you make.

I’ve had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.

People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.

Time to turn some phrases and place them on these here pages.

To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you.

Daring soul has five diaries; gratitude, work, inspirational, prayer and language diaries.

Research" is a wonderful word for writers. It serves as excuse for EVERYTHING

Writing is like trying to escape quicksand. The harder you try the faster you sink.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, he’d mused, that most people will never find their ‘call me Ishmael’.

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.

Writing isn't only about a completed piece of work.It’s about the writer you’re becoming while creating.

Bulldogs are wonderful creatures to include in books. Besides their adorable bulldogishness, they provide the writer with a rare chance to use forms of the verb "snuffle.

When I write sometimes I strike gold, sometimes I labor in vain and keep producing rubbish

Pay attention, and use your imagination.

If you are afraid of the critics you will never write a word

If you're doing it right... you should feel while you're doing it that you're revealing a little too much of yourself.

The next best thing after finishing writing a chapter is starting a new one.

Perfectionism is the enemy of the author. There is a difference between good writing habits and perfectionism. The author who displays good writing habits delivers on time. The aspiring author who is prone to perfectionism will likely never fin...

At last something important had occurred, something that she ought to write down. But she did not know how to explain what had happened, how everything had changed in just one day, how someone she loved so dearly could be there one minute, and the next minute: gone.

A real piece of writing is one in which the writer has tried to enrich not only the book, but also his understanding of the words. The words themselves have to be open to new ideas and suggestions, and the writer himself must have the audacity to attempt new things and to risk failure

The story of what it means to be human is never complete. Every generation will produce its own share of comedies and tragedies, fools and geniuses. What the Greeks started the rest of the world will continue to build upon. The old stories will continue to explicate where we came from, while the new stories will illuminate in what direction humankind trends. The collection of future stories of humanity will add to the cumulative library of stories that past writers told, an anthology of collaborative stories will shed light upon the singleness of the human spirit in its aspirations, powers, vicissitudes, and wisdom.

A writer will always be a writer. It's not a choice, it's a destiny.

Don't worry about the consequences, just be a writer!

... I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page.

Never wait for your muse. Train him/her to show up to work when you do by pushing on. It's a dominant submission thing.

Meggie Folchart: Having writer's block? Maybe I can help.Fenoglio: Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you?Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it's a bad thing.Fenoglio: Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the world you actually live in.