quotations about writing
I tend to be very much a planner. I mean obviously details veer in the telling all the time, that's clearly the case, but in terms of the broad architecture of a book I plot carefully and if things start to veer halfway through, I tend to stop and either pull them back on course, or if I realize they are going in a better direction, I extrapolate and work out what effect this is going to have further down. I am not one of these writers who is able to enjoy flying by the sit of my pants. And there's no value judgment there, incidentally. I am very well aware that some absolutely fantastic, wonderful writers do that. For me, no, I cannot do it. I have to plan quite meticulously.
CHINA MIÉVILLE
"In a Carapace of Light: A Conversation with China Miéville", Clarkesworld
You know nobody's ever going to see the stuff, but you have to write through it. You're just trying to satisfy some grim, barren mandate. There's probably a German word for that.
JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN
The Paris Review, winter 2012
I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night ... that's when you pull the tricks ... magic.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
Interview Magazine, September 1987
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
letter to the editor, Dublin Daily Express, February 27, 1895
I try to get a feeling of what's going on in the story before I put it down on paper, but actually most of this breaking-in period is one long, fantastic daydream, in which I think about anything but the work at hand. I can't turn out slews of stuff each day. I wish I could. I seem to have some neurotic need to perfect each paragraph--each sentence, even--as I go along.
WILLIAM STYRON
The Paris Review, spring 1954
The easier a thing is to write then the more the writer gets paid for writing it. (And vice versa: ask the poets at the bus stop.)
MARTIN AMIS
The Information
It didn't occur to me that my books would be widely read at all, and that enabled me to write anything I wanted to. And even once I realized that they were being read, I still wrote as if I were writing in secret. That's how one has to write anyway--in secret.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Paris Review, winter 2010
You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"The Shadow Maker", The Telegraph, November 27, 2005
When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.
REBECCA WEST
The Paris Review, spring 1981
Things that you write are in some degree autobiographical, but the first thing you find out about autobiography is that it's the hardest thing in the world to write. It's hard because it's very difficult to be absolutely factual about yourself. So ... when you write, you may draw on facts from your own life, but if their not in harmony with your story, they're worse than useless. You just stumble over them.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986
I think without writing I would feel completely useless.
SAM SHEPARD
The Observer, March 20, 2010
I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 1, 2008
Think what it would mean if you could teach, or if you could learn the art of writing. Why, every book, every newspaper you'd pick up, would tell the truth, or create beauty. But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. For though at this moment at least a hundred professors are lecturing on the literature of the past, at least a thousand critics are reviewing the literature of the present, and hundreds upon hundreds of young men and women are passing examinations in English literature with the utmost credit, still -- do we write better, do we read better than we read and wrote four hundred years ago when we were un-lectured, un-criticized, untaught?
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"Words Fail Me", BBC radio, April 29, 1937
Yet do not miss the moral, my good men.
For Saint Paul says that all that's written well
Is written down some useful truth to tell.
Then take the wheat and let the chaff lie still.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement -- it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writers build their own realities, move into them, and occasionally send letters home.
DAVID GERROLD
The Martian Child
The factors controlling a writer's popularity are as mysterious and ultimately as unknowable as the number of stars in the sky.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
interview, SF Site, April 2001
There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
In my view, if you write every day you're a certified graphomaniac, you're OCD, you're addicted to the physical act and not the real, spiritual one.
ROSEMARY JENKINSON
"Writing is not about youth but about spark", Irish Times, March 27, 2017
Writing is about growth, challenge and change. Without those things, there's no joy in it.
VERONICA ROTH
"Best-Selling Author Veronica Roth Tells What Writing Books Is Really Like", Entrepreneur, March 30, 2017
Whether 10 or 1,000 people are listening is irrelevant. Writing is an investment in your future and your potential.
BIANCA BASS
"Why You Should Write (Even If It Feels Like Nobody Is Listening)", Huffington Post, February 29, 2016