Quotes About Writing

If every time you sat down, you expected something great, writing would always be a great disappointment. Plus that expectation would also keep you from writing.

Add to the list anytime you think of something. Then when you sit down to write, you can just grab a topic from that list and begin.

We learn writing by doing it. That simple. We don't learn by going outside ourselves to authorities we think know about it.

Failure is a hard word for people to take. Use the word kindness then instead. Let yourself be kind. And this kindness comes from an understanding of what it is to be a human being. Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure—just a big field to wander in.

Writing can teach us the dignity of speaking the truth, and it spreads out from the page into all of our life, and it should

do all my original writing by hand. I have greater mobility: I can write on planes, with friends in cafés. Plus it feels more connected with my body; my hand moves with my arm and shoulder, which is connected to my chest and heart. All good writing comes from the body and is a physical experience.

Writing is 100% listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you. if you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else.

Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things: read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and coloured sensation and keep your pen moving across the page.

Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don't worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up north—just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen, a half hour.

We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop these details from continuing.

this quiet place exists as we exist, here on the earth. It just is. That is where the best writing comes from and what we must connect with in order to write well.

To read and to write is to be empowered. No shackle can ultimately hold you.

and though death is howling at our backs and life is roaring at our faces, we can just begin to write, simply begin to write what we have to say.

We're always thinking we should be writing no matter what else we might be doing. It's not fun. The life of an artist isn't easy. You're never free unless you are doing your art.

Writing can be very lonely. Who's going to read it, who cares about it?

Own anything you want in your writing and then let it go.

SIT DOWN WITH THE plan to write something you have always wanted to write but have never managed to get around to. This time, though, you are not timing yourself. You are sitting down with the determination to write it through, even if it takes all afternoon or night. Relax and ease into it. Promise yourself you'll burn through, put the real stuff down, and not get in your own way.

THE BASIC UNIT of writing practice is the timed exercise.

TAKE A SUBJECT, a situation, a story that is hard for you to talk about, and write about it. Write slowly, evenly, in a measured way. Don't skip over any part of it. Stay in there. It might take you several days, a week, a month to write out the whole thing. Continue to work on it every day until it is finished.

It is good to pay attention to our dreams. For a period of a few weeks, write them down each morning. You don't have to do anything else. Just write them down. They have their own magic and will bleed into your waking life. While

It's a lot better to sound like Ernest Hemingway than like Aunt Bethune, who thinks Hallmark greeting cards contain the best poetry in America.

the back of every word we write is no word. Only because no word exists is there space enough to write some word. So when we write about our feelings and perceptions, it is writing practice when we also touch the place where there are no feelings, no perceptions, there is no you, no person doing any writing. In other words you disappear, you become one with your words, not separate, and when you put your pen down, the you who was writing is gone.

Writing became a tool I used to digest my life and understand, finally, the grace, the gratitude I could feel, not because everything was hunky-dory, but because we can use everything we are.

Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page. If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.