Quotes About Writing

This month marks the third anniversary of my blog. I started it as a way to write more and I began by writing about my struggles with creating. Then I added book reviews, first on books about writing and then on fiction that interests me. 

A lot of my posts begin with quotes about writing. I thought it would be a good idea to review them once in a while, so I’ve put them together as an anniversary post. 

Reminders that you have to put in the work:

“Don’t just plan to write — write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.”

— P.D. James

“People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it.”

— Harlan Ellison 

“The truth is that there’s always a gap between the story as you imagined it — compelling, insightful, rich with subtle nuance — and what actually ends up in the manuscript. This is because stories must be written, and read, one word at a time…”

— Nancy Kress 

“You can always fix bad pages. You can’t fix no pages. So write. Just write. Try to turn off that voice of doom that paralyzes you.”

— Harlan Coben 

 

“Finish things.”

— Neil Gaiman 

 

“Work inspires creation. Keep working. If you succeed, keep working. If you fail, keep working. If you’re interested, keep working. If you’re bored, keep working.”

— Michael Crichton 

Inspiration

Michael Crichton’s quote really spoke to me. But what do you do when you have the desire to write but you don’t feel inspired to write?  Well, you have two choices. 

1. Write.

2. Don’t write.

I realize that’s not as easy as it sounds. Finding the time and the energy can be a challenge. Life gets in the way. But whether you have inspiration or not, I’ve found that the act of writing regularly leads to inspiration, which leads to energy, which leads to moving forward and finishing things. But you have to get up off the sofa. 

The act of not writing leads to doing whatever it is you have decided to do instead. I’ve spent years doing option two and feeling fine about it. Now I have a lot of unfinished stories. 

 

I’ve been writing more and more over these last three years though. The quotes above and the rest of the quotes below have all helped to inspire me in one way or another. 

Quotes on Writing and Creativity

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”

— Mary Oliver

“When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we are capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.”

— Maya Angelou

“We live by stories. It’s the principle by which we organize our experience and thus derive our sense of who we are.”

—Tobias Wolff

“You can’t be afraid to deal with your demons. You’ve got to go there to be able to write.” 

— Lucinda Williams

“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”

— James Stevens

“It’s urgent, like literary appendicitis. In writing, you operate on yourself and save yourself.” 

— Ray Bradbury

“Imagine it, create it.”

— Toni Morrison

“Genius is nothing more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.”

— Charles Baudelaire

“You start by imitating others, there is lack of clarity, there are many reasons to fail. But there is a seed that slowly grows.”

— Octavio Paz

"The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart."

— Natalie Goldberg

“Writing a book is like having an empty pool in the yard and every day going out and throwing in a cup of water to fill it.”

— Bethany Ball

“As slowly as I write, the story seems to unfold itself, in spite of me.”

— Isabel Allende

 

"If today was not a productive day don't beat yourself to death over it. Wake up tomorrow and start from there. Try it. It works. We can't go back. We can only go forward. Let's go!" 

— Terry McMillan

 

“Something that you feel will find its own form.”

— Jack Kerouac 

 

"Write what should not be forgotten."

— Isabel Allende

 

“Very few writers know what they are doing until they’ve done it.”

— Anne Lamott

 

“I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don’t have answers to.”

— Toni Morrison 

 

“Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can’t — and, in fact you’re not supposed to — know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing.”

— Anne Lamott

 

"Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work."

— Jennifer Egan 

 

“You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”

— Stephen King 

"Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book."

— Jane Smiley 

 

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most irreverent and original manner possible.”  

— Richard Feynman

 

“Writers are either developing an idea or they are questing, even if unconsciously, for the germ of an idea.”

— Patricia Highsmith

 

“You won’t know what’s in you until you test it.”

— Ray Bradbury

 

“Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.”

— John Updike

 

“Writing is what I love to do. It can be maddening, frustrating, and the genesis for all sorts of unhealthy behavior (as well as grand plots of procrastination), but I cherish all elements of it. A part of your brain is permanently moored in the storytelling harbor. It affects how you view the world and indeed how you experience everything in that world. It demands complete devotion.”

— David Baldacci

“We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.”

— Louis L’Amour 

In closing, here's a quote that I came across a few years ago that I haven’t used before.

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

— Neil Gaiman