Quotes About Process

I feel a terrible loss when I (eventually must) complete a work of fiction.

The great thing about being a writer is that you have a long, perhaps frighteningly long time in which to do your work.

I write very, very slowly, and for me, I have to summon all sorts of resources to make one of these pieces work.

Creativity, as I see it, is the process of putting your imagination to work. It's been defined rather simply as applied imagination. That's not a bad way to think about it.

It takes me a long time to understand my work myself, so I name them in the order that they're created.

Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

It's such a private thing - 'my process' - I can just say that the work that I do is like therapy between me and the character.

I try not to think too much or be too impatient, and let the back of my brain do its mysterious work.

Writing by hand is a way of letting mystery into my writing. But I'm constantly trying to figure out how to do this job. It's a work in progress.

The songs that you work and work and work on sometimes are just forced and not as good.

Sometimes you just feel like you could work forever on something and never know when it's done.

I was toying with the idea of ambivalence a lot. It's something I work on, not being so invested in outcomes and being more engaged in the process of my life.

The way that I work is very specific, very thorough, and the process has to be totally clear.

Ideas mostly come from the work itself. Often when I'm drawing, the words will be bouncing around in my head, and when I'm writing, ideas about the drawing happen.

There's definitely a magical quality to writing that can't be explained. I can write something I love in two days, or I can work on a story every day for months and it never comes together.

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.

You didn't have to work to keep your fear up, your energy up, or your anxiety. It is all kind of built into the process.

Allow the artist to finish the piece of work before you critique it.

Every time I work on a project, I keep every little piece of paper.

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

It's the way I like to work for these kinds of songs [like "Peace Trail"]. It was the right time of the month; everything was looking good.

Of course, all my work is photographed and I also take quite a lot of photographs of work in production.

Obviously, I don't make an entire edition all at once, so the studio often goes back to produce editions, but that's a bit different. I guess I'm always thinking about the next work.

I think most writers can't really think about their work without a kind of revulsion. And I think that's probably why we keep going back and trying again, trying to do better each time.