94 Quotes About Creative Process

It’s natural to want to know the secrets of creative genius, but it’s hard to know exactly what those are. The creative process is a mysterious one that few artists and writers will ever fully understand. It can be a matter of inspiration, an accident that inspires a new idea, or a conscious effort to create something new. Most people have a good idea of what goes into their creative process, but not many have a clear idea of what the process is actually like Read more

Hearing about what it’s like for the artist helps them realize the steps they take and how it all relates together.

Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts...
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Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion. Red Haircrow
My life will be the best illustration of all my...
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My life will be the best illustration of all my work. Hans Christian Andersen
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One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. Friedrich Nietzsche
I writebecauseit is the only wayi can reach you.
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I writebecauseit is the only wayi can reach you. Sanober Khan
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Patriarchy doesn't get yet that 'hope' is a powerful force that drives creativity. Otherwise words like 'false' and 'hope' would never be forced into this unconscious coupling.... Hope is not false. And never has been... Rather, hope is part of the often forgotten feminine contribution to the creative process. Deirdre Morris
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what...
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To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make. Truman Capote
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is...
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The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first. Blaise Pascal
Put down everything that comes into your head and then...
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Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.", 1964) Colette
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Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system. Flannery OConnor
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First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. Octavia E. Butler
My most important piece of advice to all you would-be...
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My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip. Elmore Leonard
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The professor leaned forward. “But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.” Her lovely face turned fierce. “Think about it Cath. That’s what makes a god–or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself. Rainbow Rowell
[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I...
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[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothing puts the reader off more than a big slab of prose at the start.", Issue 64, Winter 1975) P.g. Wodehouse
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When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate. John Steinbeck
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Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had."; Mount Holyoke College, May 23, 1999] Anna Quindlen
Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to....
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Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out. E.m. Forster
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Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn’t work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer."] Ray Bradbury
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10 Steps to Becoming a Better WriterWrite.Write more. Write even more. Write even more than that. Write when you don’t want to. Write when you do. Write when you have something to say. Write when you don’t. Write every day. Keep writing. Brian Clark
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The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.", May/June 2009)] Stephen King
[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants...
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[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer should patronise one on that account. Dorothy L. Sayers
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[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of them.", Issue 64, Winter 1975) P.g. Wodehouse
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All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone. Erica Jong
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When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.", May 10, 1886) . Anton Chekhov
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The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.", University of the Arts, 134th Commencement (Philadelphia, PA, May 17, 2012)] Neil Gaiman
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Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in. .. the edit.", The Guardian, 20 February 2010] Will Self
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Don’t dash off a six-thousand-word story before breakfast. Don’t write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will none the less get something that looks remarkably like it. Set yourself a “stint, ” [London wrote 1, 000 words nearly every day of his adult life] and see that you do that “stint” each day; you will have more words to your credit at the end of the year. Study the tricks of the writers who have arrived. They have mastered the tools with which you are cutting your fingers. They are doing things, and their work bears the internal evidence of how it is done. Don’t wait for some good Samaritan to tell you, but dig it out for yourself. See that your pores are open and your digestion is good. That is, I am confident, the most important rule of all. Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory. And work. Spell it in capital letters. WORK. WORK all the time. Find out about this earth, this universe; this force and matter, and the spirit that glimmers up through force and matter from the maggot to Godhead. And by all this I mean WORK for a philosophy of life. It does not hurt how wrong your philosophy of life may be, so long as you have one and have it well. The three great things are: GOOD HEALTH; WORK; and a PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE. I may add, nay, must add, a fourth– S I N C E R I T Y. Without this, the other three are without avail; with it you may cleave to greatness and sit among the giants." magazine, March 1903)]. Jack London
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Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making it clear so that the reader can see it too. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. Ernest Hemingway
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The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one is expected to write; surely one can only write the book that is there to be written., 8 September 1935) Dorothy L. Sayers
The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as...
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The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen. Colette
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Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words. P.D. James
When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing. .....
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When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing. .. A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of magic.", 6 March 2012] Susanna Clarke
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By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens in his mind is primarily pictures. Wallace Stegner
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I do feel that literature should be demystified. What I object to is what is happening in our era: literature is only something you get at school as an assignment. No one reads for fun, or to be subversive or to get turned on to something. It's just like doing math at school. I mean, how often do we sit down and do trigonometry for fun, to relax. I've thought about this, the domination of the literary arts by theory over the past 25 years -- which I detest -- and it's as if you have to be a critic to mediate between the author and the reader and that's utter crap. Literature can be great in all ways, but it's just entertainment like rock'n'roll or a film. It is entertainment. If it doesn't capture you on that level, as entertainment, movement of plot, then it doesn't work. Nothing else will come out of it. The beauty of the language, the characterisation, the structure, all that's irrelevant if you're not getting the reader on that level -- moving a story. If that's friendly to readers, I cop to it. T.C. Boyle
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Please don't entertain for a moment the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the most inspired, the most noble, the most distinguished writing. Read what the great ones have said about their jobs; how they never sit down to their work without a sigh of distress and never get up from it witout a sigh of relief. Do you imagine that your Muse is forever flamelike -- breathing the inspired word, the wonderful situation, the superb solution into your attentive ear? .. Believe me, my poor boy, if you wait for inspiration in our set-up, you'll wait for ever. Ngaio Marsh
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I don't know exactly where ideas come from, but when I'm working well ideas just appear. I've heard other people say similar things - so it's one of the ways I know there's help and guidance out there. It's just a matter of our figuring out how to receive the ideas or information that are waiting to be heard. Jim Henson
We all have 10, 000 bad drawings in us. The...
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We all have 10, 000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better. Walt Stanchfield
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Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.", December 6, 2011)] . Michael Michalko
Entire universes flourish in my mind. Sometimes I get lost...
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Entire universes flourish in my mind. Sometimes I get lost in there. Janey Colbourne
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When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of human . Anton Chekhov
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We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the “intolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his life–the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a child–he will take endless trouble–and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less. C.s. Lewis
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Years and years ago, I read a great interview with Jam and Lewis, the R&B producers, in which they described what it was like to be members of Prince's band. They'd sit down, and Prince would tell them what he wanted them to play, and they'd explain that they couldn't--they weren't quick enough, or good enough. And Prince would push them and push them until they mastered it, and then just when they were feeling pleased with themselves for accomplishing something they didn't know they had the capacity for, he'd tell them the dance steps he needed to accompany the music. This story has stuck with me, I think, because it seems like an encapsulation of the very best and most exciting kind of creative process. . Nick Hornby
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Step into the center of the center of the center - right into your Now - and see: how elegant and honest this moment is. Just being yourself, a world to hold your feet, a universe to lift your gaze, a heart beating - constant, in the center of it all. Laurie Perez
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For the fact is that disorder is the condition of the mind's fertility: it contains the mind's promise, since its fertility depends on the unexpected rather than the expected, depends on what we do not know, and because we do not know it, than what we know. Unknown
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There’s no matter here you can’t re-matter into love. Laurie Perez
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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 any . Cormac McCarthy
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Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever Anna Quindlen
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Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about. John Cleese
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The mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind. Katherine Mansfield
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Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard . Michael Michalko
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Desire is the impulse that sparks the flame. Cathy Wild
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The hardest situation is when the individuals desperate “to cut off your wings” are your closest family members whom you can’t escape dealing with. Sahara Sanders
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Yes, you are creative and in slow, languid times, creativity peers out of your soul like a field mouse from its burrow at night. Michele Jennae
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Creativity is an inherently human trait that allowed us to dominate our environment and make our way to the top of the food chain. Harry Hoover
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Words are the residue that I was there, that I loved my wife, that I kissed my children goodnight, that I sacrificed my life for them. Words are a curse. Life is a curse. Words escape life. Life escapes words. What in God's name am I? How does someone name a God? What is it to name yourself? Sergio Troncoso
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Creativity isn't a switch that's flicked on or off; it's a way of seeing, engaging and responding to the world around you. Rod Judkins
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Poetry. i am not writing it.(make way for me please)it is my skin. dripping with light. Sanober Khan
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I’ve learned that the creative life may or may not be the apex of human civilization, but either way it’s not what I thought it was. It doesn’t make you special and sparkly. You don’t have to walk alone. You can work in an office – I’ve worked in offices for the past 15 years and written five novels while doing it. The creative life is forgiving: You can betray it all you want, again and again, and no matter how many times you do, it will always take you back. Lev Grossman
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Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of 'somedays'. Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in Eng Glen Cook
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I just needed time alone with my own thoughts Got treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault Kanye West
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Your page stands against you and says to you that you are a thief. Marcus Valerius Martialis
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The trick, of course, is to lose one day and come back to win the next. But that is possible only when we draw healthy pleasure and confidence from our creative processes. John H. Lienhard
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Whether we write lyrics or craft legislation, sell homes or teach classes, design spaces or open franchises, prayer is a critical part of the creative process. Don’t just brainstorm; praystorm. Mark Batterson
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Life is beautiful dream. Lailah Gifty Akita
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The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revi Stephen King
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All that night he thought like boomerangs fly: an idea would shoot way off into the distance, all the way to a caravan in Hollywood and, for a moment, when he had got as far away from school and reality as it was possible to go, he was reasonably happy; then it would begin the return journey, thump him on the head, and leave him in exactly the place he had started from. And all the time it got nearer and nearer to the morning. Nick Hornby
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To write is to feel the dance of your soul swirling in a dream that drips imagination onto paper. DiAnn Mills
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Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words. Ann Patchett
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My imagination was running amok again. Twice in one night. This never happens when I’m sitting in front of a typewriter. Gary Reilly
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To express yourself in a creative way you don't need structure you need an empty mind. Eyen A. Gardner
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Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final s Alice Munro
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When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing. .. A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of m Susanna Clarke
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We love to learn because learning feels good. It both satisfies and stimulates curiosity. Reading a good book, having a meaningful conversation, listening to great music–just doing these things make us happy. They have no extrinsic purpose. To give them one takes away from their joy. Zander Sherman
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When someone asks me what a song is about, it’s like, I feel like I might ruin it if you ask me that. I feel like I did my best to explain the song in the song on its own terms as a song. Kyle Morton
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You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing an Unknown
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She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before. Robert M. Pirsig
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It is kind of ridiculous that a poet is expected to live in the real world. Sanober Khan
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To be a poet meansto live with a permanent wound forever susceptibleto either the shade of the skyor someone's eyes. Sanober Khan
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Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about meaning and destiny. Inventing plausible new realities is what the genre is all about. One starts from a hypothesis and then builds out the logic, adding detail and incident to give substance to imaginary structures. In that respect, science fiction and theology have much in common. Lawrence Wright
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The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you Neil Gaiman
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The "if I had time" lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born - without the luxury of time. Julia Cameron
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[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of P.g. Wodehouse
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The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make things. Dorothy L. Sayers
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After passionately nursing this idea for about an hour, I suddenly had another idea: no I wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't make an entire city out of cereal boxes in the basement. The moment I had this second thought, I knew this was the real one. Miranda July
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MFA in a Box is designed to help you to find the courage to put truth into words and to understand that writing is a life-and-death endeavor – but that nothing about a life-and-death endeavor keeps it from being laugh-out-loud funny. John Rember
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Oh God, for a few who will love me in tiny ways every single day of my flashing existence. For a mere one or two who will treat me like the trash I am, who will love the smell of garbage and rummage through the bin of my failings to find the wrapped cheeseburger they can do without but consider long enough to get their taste buds used to the idea. Oh for a melodious tongue to sing me a song about french fries. Chila Woychik
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Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see "creator" as the literal term for "artist". I am suggesting you take the term "creator" quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities. Julia Cameron
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The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got. Julia Cameron
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Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a romantic idea that writing is some beautiful experience that takes place in an architectural room filled with leather novels and chai tea. Amy Poehler
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Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use? Stephen Fry
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Why start if you are going to do a half-assed job anyway? Monika Zands
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Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in. .. the Will Self