10 Quotes About The Writing Process #WritingWednesdays

As a blogger/writer, you should be like a sponge, absorbing information, experiences and knowledge from everything and everybody. Here are some quotes about the writing process – you can learn from.

Quotes About The Writing Process

#1
“You once said to would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing one self to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind…That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
#2
“Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.”
― Gore Vidal

#3
“A short story is a sprint, a novel is a marathon. Sprinters have seconds to get from here to there and then they are finished. Marathoners have to carefully pace themselves so that they don’t run out of energy (or in the case of the novelist– ideas) because they have so far to run. To mix the metaphor, writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.”
― Jonathan Carroll

#4
“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”
― Erin Bow

#5
“Have you ever pondered the miracle of popcorn? It starts out as a tiny, little, compact kernel with magic trapped inside that when agitated, bursts to create something marvelously desirable. It’s sort of like those tiny, little thoughts trapped inside an author’s head that―in an excited explosion of words―suddenly become a captivating fairy tale!”
― Richelle E. Goodrich

#6
“For most of the process, nothing but faith, fueled by your own stubbornness, will be pulling you along. The work that you’ve done on the book so far won’t be much comfort, because so much of it will be insufferable crap, until the very last moment, when you figure out how to fix it and everything comes together.”
― Kristin Cashore

#7
“Basically I agree with the view that writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place. (Please excuse this strange analogy: with a fungi fish, the tastiest part is the portion near the poison – this might be something similar to what I’m getting at).”
― Haruki Murakami

#8
“Commencing and concluding any writing project entails making certain compromises. A person must put off attending to other projects in order to devote him or herself to taking on an extensive writing project. The allocation of a writer’s limited resources of time requires choosing how much time to devote to any manuscript. One must stop working on a manuscript before it meets all the writer’s hopeful expectations.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

#9
“The thing that gets in the way of people writing is what they want to write about. Because they’ll start writing, and they’ll get angry at the thing that they’re writing because it wasn’t what was in their head. One of the things you have to do in writing is get over the thing that brought you to the chair. The thing that brought you to the chair is great and really wonderful, but at some point you have to give over to the practice of what you’ve written versus what you want to write. What you want to write is going to destroy you. What you have written is the thing you’ve got.”
― David Stuart MacLean

#10
“I always feel like I should have really interesting answers to questions about my writing process -and one day I’ll make something up involving goat bones and virgin’s blood – but the truth is, I get up, make coffee, I sit down, and I start writing.”
― Alistair Cross