Top Writing Process Quotes

Writing's in the nouns.

You haven't seen yourself until you look through the eyes of your characters.

All morning I lay down sentences, erase them, and try new ones. Soon enough, when things go well, the world around me dwindles: the sky out the window, the furious calm of the big umbrella pine ten fe...

Getting started on writing a book isn't as hard as it sounds. You don't need a plan and an outline. In fact, all you need are two things: time and one idea.

Writing is easy. Writing a publishable book is hard.

The farther away you get from the literary traffic, the closer you are to sources.

I think of myth and magic as the hieroglyphics of the human psyche. They are a special language that circumvents conscious thought and goes straight to the subconscious. Non-fiction uses the medium of...

It's basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes, in fact often, it doesn't and it just runs out of steam. The hope for me is that it will snowball....

Don't give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn't what you thought it would be. Given skill and a story that compels you, muster your determination and make what's on the page clo...

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

Writing is an art and a skill that can be developed

I read the novel I had been writing for several months with an odd sense that it was the work of a stranger. I usually work in the dead hours of night and surprising the manuscript mid-morning reveale...

I write not because I want to but because I am destined to.

think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to f...

Writers don't kill characters. Characters kill characters.

You haven't seen yourself until you look through the eyes of your characters.~Tanela Hicks

Do not worry about what words to use. Worry about why this story needs to be told and the rest will take care of itself.

I miss the days when I was alone with my characters and no one else knew them except me.

Usually naive interviewers hover between two mutually contradictory convictions: one, that a text we call creative develops almost instantaneously in the mystic heat of inspirational raptus; or the ot...

A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE.