1,024 Quotes About Writing-process

We had to write a lot of essays in school. I had a very good teacher who taught us English, V. Siddharthacharry. I enjoyed the early process of learning to structure my essays. When I came home after finishing school at eighteen, I started writing extensively.I liked to be meticulous. Initially, I read a lot on western philosophy but also made notes on the administration and constitutions of different nations and civilizations.

If you’re a perfectionist about your writing, [your rough draft] is the time to get over it. . . . Decide ahead of time that your rough draft is going to be pretty awful, and join the ranks of the great writers of the world. . . . Save the niceties for the revision stage.

Editors and agents have an uncanny ability to zero in on the very thing you knew—but didn’t want to admit—was wrong with your proposal or manuscript.

O público quer saber como é estar vivo na ponta da faca do agora. O que significa ser um ser humano hoje?

Posicionar o público não é algo novo. Shakespeare não chamou sua peça de Hamlet, chamou-a de A Tragédia de Hamlet, Príncipe da Dinamarca. Ele deu a comédias títulos como Muito Barulho Por Nada e A Comédia dos Erros, de modo que, a cada tarde no Teatro Globe, o público elisabetano estava psicologicamente preparado para chorar ou rir.

When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story...when you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.

You know too little and it doesn't exist. You know too much and it doesn't exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the THERE itself. There, that is writing's location and aim. But how to get there?

Only my characters truly know what's happening - I just hold the pen

W HEN YOU WRITE , you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year.