Writing Quotes
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I know that some of the finest writing I've ever read has been sports writing, whatever the topic was, whatever the sport they were writing about. It seems to be an area where people are allowed a little more leeway than when they're reporting on traffic jams and city-council meetings.
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I began wanting to create a detective who really turned the tables on that image of women, to know that you could have a sex life and not be a bad person. You could have a sex life and still solve your own problems. It was eight years from when I started having the fantasy that I was going to create such a detective to when I actually sat down and came up with V. I. Warshawski. It was a long, slow journey to come to a writing voice and do that character.
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I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine.
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Basically you come up with the fictional idea and you start writing that story, but then in order to write it and to make it seem real, you sometimes put your own memories in. Even if it's a character that's very different from you.
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I was a weird kid. It wasn't until I saw 'Aguirre: The Wrath of God' at 16 that my whole world changed. The obsession with that was equal to the obsession with writing.
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Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
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I learned you have to move fast, writing futuristic satire in America: Before you know it, you're a realist!
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It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.
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I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing.
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I don't know if there are topics that I unconsciously avoid, but as soon as they pop up in my writing, I try to take on those topics, whether or not I publish the poems.
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I don't listen to anything when I'm writing. I need total quiet, which is astounding, given that I spent years working for a newspaper and having to write features surrounded by ringing phones and people shouting.
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Generally, I think most of my writing tends to have some kind of magical element to it. That's the way I can access the emotional life of the character.
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I wanted to use my writing skills to bring attention to the overwhelming needs of the Gulf coast region.
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Letter writing is an excellent way of slowing down this lunatic helterskelter universe long enough to gather one’s thoughts
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Be encouraged. Your heart is writing a poem on the world and it's being turned into a thousand songs.
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Writing is such a singular and lonely occupation. And it's interesting; all of the work that you create is so singular.
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I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.
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Every artist wants an audience, and it's incredible to me how books take on a life of their own and reach people whom you could never meet. That's what got me interested in writing in the first place.
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There are a lot of people, who want to be writers, who stumble at a blank page. You could imagine an algorithm that could give writers a first draft or a starter kit, so it could enable people to be more prolific in their writing.
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I like sitting and writing with my buddies.
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To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
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When writing about Edinburgh, I place my characters in the parts of the city that I myself have lived in, or else know well, those being the Southside, Marchmont in particular, where I lived as a student, and the New Town/Stockbridge area where I live now and have done for the past 30 years.
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Writing, for me, is very inspiration-dependent. And inspiration can be a jerk.
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It's not at all uncommon for a writer to get a ton of publicity for one book and then not get as much for the next one. I don't worry about that because I try to worry about the one single part of the job I can control: the writing of the book. If I do that well, I feel, good tidings generally will follow and readers will stick with me.
