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Writing Quotes

Writing Quotes

Last updated: November 21, 2021

708 Writing Quotes organized by Most Popular

“We all know it: writing — literally just the act of sitting down and starting to write — is physically impossible.”
— Katie Heaney, 9 Writers on the Most Outrageous Ways They’ve Procrastinated
Tagged: Writing, LOL, How to be a writer, Procrastinating
“As far as I’m concerned, if somebody wants to make a movie [from my stories], I’m behind that idea and I’m always interested to see what they come up with.”
— Stephen King, Stephen King on His New Netflix Movies, It, and His Big Year
Tagged: Writing, Career, How to be a writer, How to tell a story, Movies
“there are a lot of bad stories out there doing real harm in the world

it’s up to us to tell better ones”
— Saladin Ahmed, via twitter.com
Tagged: Stories, Storytelling, Writing, Writer's Truth, Writers
“Finally, there came a time when I decided to ignore all the advice I had read and do the only thing I know how to do, which is write. I wrote what I felt like writing, when I felt like writing, how I felt like writing. I jumped all over the place. None of my chapters had numbers. I didn’t take notes, or create a timeline, or plot anything out.”
— Roxane Gay, National Novel Writing Month
Tagged: Writing, How to be a writer, How to write a book
“I'm still with my 1st agent, but from what I hear, some red flags with an agent are:
1. If they take more than a week to return a simple email, more than 6 weeks w edits
2. If you've been working on a book for over a year and still haven't gone on sub.
3. That sinking feeling...”
— Delilah S. Dawson, via twitter.com
Tagged: Writing, publishing a book, agents, finding agents, publishing industry
“We had a question this morning: How do you come up with names for characters and places in Science Fiction and Fantasy? Easy. STEAL 'EM.

Kidding. You can't have Mr. Spuck go to Chogwarts. But you can take inspiration. Start by considering names that stuck with you. Why?

Luke Skywalker = Timeless Biblical name + portmanteau of something space-y. There's a rhythm, a grandness to it. Sounds like destiny.

Han Solo = Short, sweet, like a punch. Solo = alone-- he's a rugged loner. Han = close enough to familiar words to sound like a name.

They key here is that things are close enough to words/names we know to seem reasonable and be memorable. Your mouth can make the sounds.

Start with a base and get creative. I used Old Norse in Phasma. Some Fantasy uses Latin or Old English. What's the flavor of your world?

I've heard Pat Rothfuss talk about names and mouthfeel. Skyzzyx souds evil and spiderlike, while Alverdale sounds grand, elven.

So you can pick a base, a sound, a vowel you like and riff on it when you're alone. Say it out loud. How does it feel when you say it?

"Evil" sounds: s, k, v, ee, anything with 'mort' in it Grand things often have more syllables, long vowels Rough things are short, abrupt

Other great sources for names to steal/riff on: Old tombstones, old phonebooks, old maps, Behind the Name, the SSA census list online.

Caveat: If you're blatantly borrowing from a different culture than your own, be super careful and do your research.

The key is saying the name. Tasting it. Cadence is important. Your reader's going to see that name 600+ times. It should be tasty.

1-1: Dirk Pitt 1-2: Han Solo 1-3: Luke Skywalker 2-2: Sookie Stackhouse 3-1: Criminy Stain 4-2: Hermione Granger. It should feel right.


Especially unusual but still approachable names *really* grab us. 7 of 9? Jayne? Eleven? Blade? Character must live up to that promise.

Time for my personal pet peeve: Introducing a protagonist as Katherine "Kat" Smith. No one does that in real life. She's just Kat.

Naming is super fun, but don't let it slow you down. You could daydream a perfect name... or write 2000 words. Guess which one matters?

I'll often just slap Tom or Mary name in while first drafting, and at the end, I know the right name. I do a Find & Replace. Boom. Done.

Trust your instincts with names. If one pops into your head, don't spend 3 days mulling it. Just start writing. Perfect doesn't exist.

Planet names are funny, though. 'Earth' sounds like a dying groan. Consider: Was the planet named by outsiders or natives? Why?

The main thing about names is that you don't let them slow you down. The character makes people love the name, not the other way around.

As a new writer, I thought a name could make or break a protagonist/story. Nope. It's just another aspect of worldbuilding.”
— Delilah S. Dawson, via twitter.com
Tagged: Writing, Writing Tips, naming characters, Writing Advice
“So if you want to know if your edits are improving your book, consider all these points. It doesn't matter how many times you check for typos if you don't have an active plot or your main character doesn't have an arc. The book should feel TIGHTER with each edit.

Here's some tough love: It's very rare that your 1st book is the one that will get an agent or a sale. For most pro writers I know (NOT ALL; DON'T @ ME), our 1st book is great practice that is ultimately trunked. Start writing book 2 while you query. Forward momentum!

How do you know when it's time to trunk your 1st book? * When you honestly can't think of a single way to improve it further * When you've got 60+ rejections and are out of agents to query * When you're sick of it and have a new story idea WRITE THE NEXT BOOK and query again.

The painful truth is that if your goal is to be traditionally published, you can't cling to 1 book forever. You can't write 7 books in the series and expect someone to buy them. You've got to write 1 great book, query it, repeat-- until you get an agent/sale. Period.

And as I say with every one of these writing advice threads: This is all based on my experience in the world of traditional publishing. YMMV. You may disagree. Every journey is different. There are outliers. You do you. May the odds be ever in your favor.”
— Delilah S. Dawson, via twitter.com
Tagged: Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Tips, publishing a book
“If you're passionate about telling a story, write the book. Time spent writing isn't time wasted. You're making art. That's worth something.”
— Delilah S. Dawson, via twitter.com
Tagged: Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Tips, writing is art, Motivational
“Every book can't be a bestseller, obviously, and they know that. Publishers buy plenty of books that are well written to fill out their lists. That's why we have midlisters and quiet books. That's why I have a career.”
— Delilah S. Dawson, via twitter.com
Tagged: Writing, Writing Advice, Writer's Truth, publishing a book, getting published
“Protip: If you write a bunch of words you hate, it doesn't make you a bad writer. Sometimes you have to write a lot of bad to figure out what's good.”
— Sam Sykes
Tagged: Writing, Writing Tips, Writing Advice
“I opened envelopes and sorted things and logged things. After a while I got to read submissions. And it was some of the best writing education I've ever had. If you want to grow as a writer, volunteer at a lit mag or small press!”
— Roxane Gay
Tagged: Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Tips, Writer's Truth, writer's experience
“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.”
— Leonard Bernstein
Tagged: inspiration, Creativity, Literature, Writing
“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
— Leonard Bernstein
Tagged: writer, Writing, Difficulty
“Writing helps you know what is going on inside you. When you write, you catch delicate, fleeting thoughts that you might otherwise dismiss.”
— Carrie Barron, The Creativity Cure: How to Build Happiness with Your Own Two Hands
Tagged: Writing, Benefits of Journaling, Why We Write , What Writing Does, Quote of the Moment
“There is always time to make it as a writer. Always.”
— Roxane Gay
Tagged: Writing, Writer's Truth, keep writing, Keep Going, keep on dreaming, dreams come true, it's never too late, Life, live your dreams, Motivational
“Also, 50 isn't old. 60 isn't old.

THERE IS NO EXPIRATION DATE WITH WRITING. Literally, you can do this job until the day you die. So why are people fixating on getting it done before 30? Who started this myth that you have to?”
— Susan Dennard
Tagged: Writing, Writer Advice, writer, Being A Writer, Writing Advice, Motivational
“It can be hard, during the solitary years of writing a book, to imagine it might ever find its way into in the lives & hearts of others.”
— Robert Macfarlane
Tagged: Writing, Writing A Book, writing process, Writer's Truth, solitude in writing, Writing As A Career
“Here's one thing that makes it hard to finish a novel: Going down the Twitter rabbit hole.”
— Gayle Forman
Tagged: Writing, Writing A Book, writing a novel, Distractions, avoiding distractions
“Trying not to cry. when i cry while writing, the writing turns broad. But if i can stave off the tears, stand at the exact horizon where they well up but don't quite fall. . .good thinking lies there, clarity & fullness, at that border.”
— Quiara A Hudes
Tagged: Writing, writing technique, writing strategy, writing and expressing, writing is a craft, Writing As A Career
“You know what to say, though you may have buried it so deep it needs excavating. So no more excuses, dispense with the wordplay, don't waste time being timid. Unearth it, write it.”
— Quiara Alegría Hudes
Tagged: Writing, writing process, Writer's Truth, Writing Problems, Writing As A Career
“I don't *feel* like a late bloomer, but others have called me that. I published my first essay at 30, when I had a 3yo and a baby and no time, and before that I felt like a lot of people had written me off. But that's just when I figured out what I wanted to say.

(My birth father published his first book in his 70s, so I also get to be like 'beat you by 40 years!')

People who don't write try to legitimize or understand our careers based solely on publication, bylines, how many hours per week we can put in. I don't think we should inflict that on ourselves.”
— Nicole Chung
Tagged: Careers, purpose in life, Life's Purpose, Writing, writer, Life, Motivational, Empowering, late bloomers
“You gotta write so many bad poems in order to get to the good ones.”
— Clint Smith
Tagged: Writing, creating, writing poems, Writing Advice, keep on writing, Motivational
“My goal, which isn’t always successful, is to try to take the training wheels off of essays, because I tend to have a roundabout way of getting to things.”
— Sloane Crosley, You Have to Be Slightly Uncomfortable to Walk Down the Street and Notice Things
Tagged: Writing, Essays, Being A Writer
“When I read someone say that every writer dreams of their work being adapted for Film or TV, I roll my eyes. Writers dreams of being published, of finding readers and keeping them, of being given the space to write the books they want... everything else is just icing.”
— John Boyne
Tagged: Writers, Writer's Truth, writer's life, Writer's Mind, writer's experience, Being A Writer, Writing
“I want to write stories that are different from the ones I've written so far . . . I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”
— Haruki Murakami, After the Quake: Stories
Tagged: Writing, Writing & Expression, writing process, Dreams, Life
“For me, seriously, my goal is to topple the structures of toxic hierarchy. On as many levels as I can. All at once. I want damn equality and that is why I write these books. Stories make the world.”
— Maria Dahvana Headley
Tagged: Writing, Stories, writing stories, Making A Difference
“No one else’s standards of most apply. Do the things YOU imagine. Don’t try to make yourself into someone else’s version of a How To Be A Writer. Be the writer you are, & reach for the most amazing work you can do.”
— Maria Dahvana Headley
Tagged: Writing, Writing Advice, Being A Writer, writer's advice, Be yourself, be the writer that you want, Motivational, Empowering
“Your writing experience is not the same as anyone else's. What another writer does to tell their story will not be your way. Do what is best to write your story and do it to the best of your ability. That means be true to your story & responsible to your readers.”
— Ellen Oh
Tagged: Writing, Writing Advice, writing stories, Writing Books, writer's advice
“’T is hard to say if
greater want of skill
Appear in writing
or in judging ill;”
— Alexander Pope
Tagged: judging, skill, Writing
“Yet here’s the greater paradox: writing, though performed alone, is also the only absolutely declarative, meaning-beset art form we have. Its purpose is to communicate. With others. More than a painter, much more than a composer, a writer can never “be alone.””
— Patricia Hampl, I Have Wasted My Life
Tagged: Writing, Solitude, Art
“ I have wasted my life is a cry of triumph—I’m lying here in this hammock doing nothing and haha on you out there working your lives away.”
— Patricia Hampl, I Have Wasted My Life
Tagged: Writing, Work, Rest, My aesthetic
“Being a writer is like being a sculptor, except a writer makes her own stone.”
— Ana Menendez, The Story in the Stone
Tagged: Writing, Craft
“Cultural appropriation is the act of adopting certain aspects of a culture in a manner that disrespects the cultural significance and inaccurately represents a community.”
— Ixty Quintanilla, Cultural Appropriation In Fiction: Here Are Some Tips To Consider When Your Writing Includes Different Cultures
Tagged: Cultural Appropriation, Definitions, Writing, Inclusive Fiction, Cultural Sensitivity
“Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective—in full earshot of the world.”
— Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
Tagged: Writing, Moral Obligation, African
“Read as a writer! Read to understand HOW an author created conflict, heightened your emotional response, created a turn in the text.

Read like a surgeon. Read like a locksmith. Read like an ethical, non-plagiarizing but absorptive thief.”
— Elizabeth Acevedo
Tagged: Writing Advice, Writing, Read, Writing Tips, Writing Techniques
“Description is, in fact, more useful for what it says about the noticer than the noticed.”
— Adam O'Fallon Price, On Not Noticing
Tagged: Being A Writer, Detail, Noticing Detail, Writer's Mind, Writing, On Writing, Experience, Show Not Tell, Details, Vivid Detail, Description In Writing, descriptive writing
“As with writing, the silence says as much, or more, than the word.”
— Adam O'Fallon Price, On Not Noticing
Tagged: Being A Writer, Detail, Noticing Detail, Writer's Mind, Writing, On Writing, Experience, Show Not Tell, Details, Vivid Detail, Description In Writing, descriptive writing
“The point is to get a pro's eyes on your work. Whether that's a career writer you admire, an agent, or an editor working with a legit publisher, their feedback can often give you the barometer for where you are and what you need to do to level up.”
— Delilah S. Dawson
Tagged: Writing, Writing Advice, Writing Tips
“Sometimes you write for 10 hours and never come up with a single thing you like, and then you wake up the next day and the right phrase is just sitting there for you at the front of your mind like a lukewarm snack cake from an easy-bake oven.”
— rachel syme
Tagged: Writing, writing process
“Writing is 98% hell, 1% finding the word you wanted without using a thesaurus at all, and 1% eating a snack in celebration of finding said word.”
— rachel syme
Tagged: Writing, writing process, writing truth
“I always prefer writing about people. People grow, change and sometimes change back, but they remain persistently irritating and open-ended until they die. And sometimes afterward, too.”
— Sam Sykes
Tagged: Writing, writing preference, writing process
“The terrifying truth of the writing life: however many words you wrote last week, you still have to write a load this week.”
— Joe Abercrombie
Tagged: Writing, writing truth, Writing Advice, Writing Tips
“This is ether a day for writing, the early stages of a honeymoon, or fifteen grams of opium. It’s raining, a very pretty rain, not the spasmodic kind that we get in California but a long steady one, the kind they show in the newsreels with the natives sitting on the rooftops with their cattle, wives and chickens.”
— Groucho Marx, The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx
Tagged: Rain, Writing, Honeymoon, California, Newsreels
“To present a scientific subject in an attractive and stimulating manner is an artistic task, similar to that of a novelist or even a dramatic writer. The same holds for writing textbooks.”
— Max Born
Tagged: Science, Novels, Textbooks, Writing
“Scattered means that you’re not really writing, yet. When you’re deeply in the words that scattered feeling will vanish, but it takes work to de-scatter.”
— Michael Lopp, Do you ever just feel incredibly scattered when writing?
Tagged: Writing
“Neutrality, distance, reserve: I have always believed in these things as my guiding aesthetic.”
— Bret Easton Ellis, Bret Easton Ellis Has Calmed Down. He Thinks You Should, Too.
Tagged: audience, Writing
“I feel like that will only change when the way people view writing on the internet period changes. ‘Sad Girl Twitter’ and Alt-Lit exist because they are types of writing that only exist on the internet and are only popular because of the internet. And for somebody like Jonathan Franzen who denies the internet as an art form—he’s going to view those people as shit heads that nobody cares about. That’s maybe because the internet is so new and because writing on the internet is so new, it’s really hard to change that viewpoint. Especially amongst older generations.”
— Mira Gonzalez, Mira Gonzalez on Being Labelled
Tagged: Writing, The internet, Twitter, Jonathan Franzen
“I encourage my students at times like these to get one page of anything written, three hundred words of memories or dreams or stream of consciousness on how much they hate writing — just for the hell of it, just to keep their fingers from becoming too arthritic, just because they have made a commitment to try to write three hundred words every day. Then, on bad days and weeks, let things go at that… Your unconscious can’t work when you are breathing down its neck. You’ll sit there going, ‘Are you done in there yet, are you done in there yet?’ But it is trying to tell you nicely, ‘Shut up and go away.'”
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Tagged: Writer's Block, Advice, Writing, Art, Creativity, Encouragement
“The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.”
— Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway on Coding
Tagged: Writer's Block, Advice, Writing, Art, Creativity, Stuck
“Over the years, I’ve found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.”
— Norman Mailer, The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing
Tagged: Writer's Block, Advice, Writing, Art, Creativity, Values, Rules