Quotes about writing
writing stuff form
Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff...forms a base on which to build something better. Jennifer Egan
writing trying worst
I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.
writing stuff regularity
Because you can't write habitually and well all the time, you have to be willing to write badly. That's how you get the regularity that enables you to be present for the good stuff.
writing opposites way
That adage about 'Write what you know' is basically the opposite of the way I function. I write about what I'm curious to find out.
writing normal strange
We're [writers] all afraid of writing badly, and there are psychological reasons, like the bad interior of ourselves is somehow being revealed, but we all fear that, and you can't write well if you're not willing to write badly. That's why you have to make writing a habit, so it feels normal and not strange.
writing years squad
Goon Squad' took about three years to write and that's the short end. My second novel, 'Look at Me,' took six years.
writing technology thinking
I write fiction longhand. That's not so much about rejecting technology as being unable to write fiction on a computer for some reason. I don't think I would write it on a typewriter either. I write in a very blind gut instinctive way. It just doesn't feel right. There's a physical connection. And then in nonfiction that's not the case at all. I can't even imagine writing nonfiction by hand.
writing ideas interesting
A sense of that kind of narrative movement that we experience online could have been in my mind easily, though not consciously. I do rely so much on my unconscious, the way I write my stuff the way I do. I let my unconscious work. I have better ideas that way and more interesting work.
writing sublime lessons
The sublime moment seems to be only a product of allowing yourself to get through, to get to a lot of stuff in your life, write about a lot of stuff and not edit yourself. That is a great lesson to learn for anybody that writes or creates in anyway, to be able to make something without being good or bad. Jeff Tweedy
writing thinking people
To be honest, I’m more concerned with living my life than writing about my life. I feel like that’s really the main thing I know now that I didn’t know when I was younger — and that is that you have to have a life to write about one. If you’re more worried about having experiences so you can write about them, I think you’re kinda being ridiculous, and I think a lot of young people look at it like that.
writing important different
One of the most important things as a writing instructor is to provide a lot of different entry points to subjects. To not impose your own personal experience as the One True Way. Jeff Vandermeer
writing imagination failing
Trust your imagination. Don't be afraid to fail. Write. Revise. Revise. Revise.
writing islands balance
Position yourself to succeed by doing the other things in your life that rejuvenate you. You can create little islands of time away from your novel that will help preserve your balance. Exhaustion will affect both your writing’s quality and your productivity.
writing fiction helping
I have to have music as a soundtrack to writing fiction. I listen to it at other times, too, but it helps me write.
writing way mood
The music I listen to while writing is really scene-specific. It's just a great motivator, a way to put myself in the mood.
writing math thinking
I got into writing and thinking about politics because I was told there would be no math. Jeff Greenfield
writing views play
In fact you can begin to discover and investigate whether you are an actor or not, whether you're in my view, qualified for a life in this profession or in this endeavor by checking yourself out and acting every day, getting plays and scripts and getting together with people and divvying up the parts and acting in one way or another, or writing things. Jeff Goldblum
writing expression use
If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music. Jean Sibelius
writing people has-beens
I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death. Jean Rhys
writing thinking ifs
When I think about it, if I had to choose, I'd rather be happy than write.
writing rivers lakes
All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.
writing trying robots
I got to draw monsters, robots and write funny stories. I loved doing that stuff and working with the actors. But it got to be less and less that stuff and more about trying to be everywhere and not being able to do one thing very enjoyably. Jhonen Vasquez
writing thinking stories
I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting. Jhumpa Lahiri
writing thinking ideas
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
writing numbers giving
I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.
writing assertive willfulness
Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.
writing mean reality
It was not in my nature to be an assertive person. I was used to looking to others for guidance, for influence, sometimes for the most basic cues of life. And yet writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do. Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconceive, to rearrange, to reconstitute nothing short of reality itself. Even among the most reluctant and doubtful of writers, this willfulness must emerge. Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, “Listen to me.
writing dark winter
I write music better in the winter, I prefer making music when it's dark. Grimes
writing would-be autobiography
To write an autobiography of Groucho Marx would be as asinine as to read an autobiography of Groucho Marx. Groucho Marx
writing feelings way
If I couldn't get published tomorrow I'd still be writing. It's something to do with feeling so overwhelmed by this experience of life that you have to tell someone about it, and in a way that reorders the experience to make it manageable. Graham Joyce
writing depends superficiality
So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. Graham Greene
writing doe precaution
A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same, to make them comfortable.
writing doors taverns
Had Shakespeare listened to the news of Duncans death in a tavern or heard the knocking on his own bedroom door after he had finished the writing of Macbeth?