Welcome to our collection of inspiring quotes on the writing process. Whether you’re a seasoned author, an aspiring writer, or simply someone who appreciates the art of crafting words, these quotes offer invaluable insights, encouragement, and wisdom to fuel your creative journey.
The writing process is a deeply personal and often challenging endeavor. It involves not only the act of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard but also delving into the depths of one’s imagination, emotions, and experiences. From the initial spark of inspiration to the final polish of editing, every stage presents its own set of joys and obstacles. Through the words of renowned authors, poets, and thinkers, we explore the intricacies of this journey, gaining new perspectives and finding solace in the shared struggles and triumphs of fellow writers.
Below, you’ll find a curated selection of quotes that capture the essence of the writing process. Whether you seek motivation, guidance, or simply a moment of reflection, may these words inspire and uplift you on your creative path. Feel free to use them to adorn your workspace, share them with fellow writers, or draw inspiration for your own writing endeavors.
I intentionally approached each story in ‘Killing and Dying’ in a different way, and that includes the writing process. Adrian Tomine
My writing process is chaos. I usually start with an overarching theme. Then I establish several story threads, but I don’t outline. I just start writing and keep notes for what may come. It’s an organic process that’s usually pretty flexible. Lisa Lutz
My writing process is consecutive, like, ‘mad scientist’ crazy. It’s not totally writing something that rhymes or even writing a rap necessarily. Sometimes it’s just writing down stuff that I’m going through. J.I.D
I loved the writing process. I would love to write more. And I’d like to do a roundtable, like ‘The View’ or ‘The Talk’ – something related to social issues and things that are current. Andi Dorfman
I don’t really have a writing process. I don’t write at all but, honestly, I feel like it’s a modern-day writing because everything is technology and if I go in there and freestyle and I keep it, I feel like I wrote that. If I go in there and fix it, it’s almost like something I wrote. Lil Baby
And I’ve always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand’s message into the writing process. It’s like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it. Jason Bateman
I try not to think too much about my writing process – I tend to feel my way forward and find more insights that way. Nick Petrie
Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‘Lights Please’ happens like that. J. Cole
When it’s your words, and then you watch it connect with an audience as the artist, I kinda reflect back on the writing process and why those words were important to me. And to watch people sing it back, I mean, that kinda means everything because that’s the whole point for me – performance and songwriting – is to connect with people. Brett Young
The writing process isn’t something I’m in love with. I’m an illustrator who writes. Chris Riddell
During the writing process, I tend not to listen to too much music. I obviously wear a lot of influences on my sleeve, but if I was listening to too many records, I would turn into too much of a monkey. Jay Reatard
There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process. Joy Williams
I enjoy talking to groups who are interested in the writing process or the industry. I never teach – because truthfully, I don’t know how it all works; it just does. Sort of magic-like. But I love to share my experiences and perspectives. Lori Foster
Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quality of discovery. Siddhartha Mukherjee
The writing process, it’s too mysterious to try and describe. Mick Jones
Writers often like to talk about how intuitive the writing process is, but in truth, building a book is a remarkably unintuitive task. Or, to put it more accurately, you need a lot more than intuition. You need plot and characters. You need a setting. You need a theme that is relevant and supported by your text. Rebecca Serle
I try to not be self-conscious in my writing process. I think it’s important to just be in your subconscious mind – at least when you’re starting an idea. St. Lucia
My writing process, such as it is, consists of a lot of noodling, procrastinating, dawdling, and avoiding. Amy Bloom
I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing. Sam Esmail
It’s not writing in the traditional sense, but I’ve always said that the writing process continues on the set and even into the editing room. Robert B. Weide
The songwriting process is different on every record because you’re never coming from the same place when you’re writing. Benji Madden
The writing process for me is pretty much always the same – it’s a solitary experience. Sheryl Crow
In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better. Doris Lessing
One of the things is, in the writing process, if you do it enough, you have a sense of where you are. I didn’t have that with the first book as I was writing it. Now, as I write books, I have a sense of where I am. Unfortunately, the sense of where I am is usually behind. Daniel H. Pink
I have had quite a lot of prizes, but I don’t think it makes any difference to the ease or difficulty to the writing process. Ruth Rendell
We have a writing process that’s very much you try to create the character in a complicated way and then you let the story lead you to discovering who the character is in a natural way. Aaron Ehasz
The writing process is the time where nothing’s been set in stone. It’s a blank slate, or a blank page. Leigh Whannell
It’s beneficial to have that younger sensibility available to you during the writing process. Mikey Day
And when you start the season writing process, you just pitch a bunch of different ideas. In the end, you probably have 20 ideas that you like. Brendan Hunt
I write every day. Most weekdays, I write about ten hours a day. That doesn’t mean eight hours of surfing the Net or watching videos on YouTube. I park my butt in a chair and write… I learned that writer’s block is a myth created by people who don’t have, or understand, a writing process. Jonathan Maberry
When we approach characters, we don’t have their full story in mind right off the bat. Through the writing process we raise questions about them, and we start to learn a bit more about them. Anna Boden
I got a little bit lost in the writing process: like, that moment in the ‘Fight Song’ music video where I’m throwing the crumpled paper on the bed, that was really true life. I was filling journals with different possibilities of lyrics for the first verse. And none of them felt right. Rachel Platten
For me, the writing process is the same as the reading process. I want to know what happens next. Neal Asher
Reading the final copy of my book was like walking down memory lane all over again. Sure, the writing process was emotional, but when I had the final copy in my hands, it was a completely different feeling. Gigi Gorgeous
I loved the writing process. I loved it. Dana Perino
In ‘Snow White and the Hunstman,’ when we see them in the Dark Forest, you’re allowed a lot of freedom to be able to cutaway to, for instance, the prince. That B and C story stuff helps the writing process, even though it makes it a more complicated movie. Evan Daugherty
The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning. A. B. Yehoshua
I love, love writing about Los Angeles. I love exploring every part of it. And I find, rather than a burden, it’s actually one of the most enjoyable parts of the writing process for me. I love everything about L.A. Okay, not the traffic. But I love the way it looks. I love the geography. I love the diversity. Robert Crais
By the end of the writing process, which is about 80 songs per album, I look at the material and think, what’s going to make a difference in someone’s life. Jason Mraz
When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted. Gunter Grass
I’d love to do another television series. I really love the writing process, and as an actor I really like how much you get to examine in television. Denis Leary
With traditional school visits, I also get to speak with people who haven’t read my books and talk about my writing process as well as the serious aspects I write about. Jay Asher
Music is an important part of my writing process. Peter James
Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process. Irvine Welsh
My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit. Cynthia Voigt
The writing process for us is different with every song. Sometimes they come from our lives, or someone else we know may be going through something that we choose to write about. Matthew Ramsey
I think I write and publish as often as I do because I can’t bear being without a book to work on… I don’t feel I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell, but I know I want to be occupied with the writing process while I’m living. Philip Roth
I write wherever I am. It helps that the writing process, for me, is a lone-wolf mission. Passenger
I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities. Sue Monk Kidd
‘Firepower’ is the eighteenth full-length studio album for Judas Priest. That’s a lot of metal songs over the decades, and the writing process is always the same, really. Rob Halford
I don’t know that it’s particularly good for my writing process, but I have gotten some very valuable writing ideas and advice through Twitter and Facebook and other social network sites. Rachel Caine
I think it starts to feel really redundant when you start to do something the same way over and over again. I don’t think it’s good to become so dependent on a certain writing process. Brie Larson
As for my writing process, there is one truth I have discovered after writing some twenty-plus books: Not every book is the same, but the middle of every book is where I really begin to question my choice of vocations. The beginning and end is usually fairly clear to me, but that middle just sucks the life right out of me. Julia London
I was fascinated with the writing process and seeing the evolution of a sketch and how it would change up to the minute before it went on the air. Trevor Moore
Well, everything surprises me about the writing process because illustrating comes much more naturally to me than writing does. Brian Selznick
I enjoy the writing process and producing; I enjoy seeing an idea come to fruition. I’m driven by very complex characters. You look at the pilot of ‘Breaking Bad,’ where there’s so much depth to the character, you can’t help but be invested when you watch. Sasha Roiz
If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there’s too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me. Eddie Vedder
The writing process really became natural when it was real and from my heart, and I was exposed. Tiffany Darwish
The pleasure for me is in the writing process, which has its own challenges. Thiagarajan Kumararaja
I worked initially in very low-budget independent films that I often wrote. My early work was all written by myself, and then I adapted ‘Tsotsi,’ so I was used to the writing process being, in a way, integral to my directing. I felt it really prepared me. Gavin Hood
My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change. Sarah Addison Allen
The real writing of a piece comes only when you are performing it. It is why I like theatre. In film and TV, the image is locked forever, but in theatre, there is constant change; each performance is part of the writing process. Robert Lepage
When the stories come easily and the writing process doesn’t feel laboring, that’s usually a good sign for me. David E. Kelley
Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there’s just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside. Marie Rutkoski
I was in the middle of filming Season 3 of ‘Grace and Frankie.’ Then the writing process for ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ was happening at the exact same time. And then the pre-production for ‘Fatherless’ was happening at the exact same time as well. Baron Vaughn
All of my scripts are based on other people’s novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process. Tom Stoppard
Early on in the writing process, there is sometimes this temptation to write around the central drama instead of just aiming for the bull’s-eye. The bullseye is harder to hit, of course, but it’s so much more satisfying when you do. J. Courtney Sullivan
If we were truly in the studio making a record, it would have been more time consuming, and certainly I would have been more involved in the writing process. Taylor Dayne
I’m not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me. Billy Squier
I don’t really like questions about the writing process, because the truth is I don’t know how I write. Elizabeth Berg
My actual writing process? I have to just love the beat before I even write on it. I can’t force myself to write to a beat that I’m not immediately loving. Lil Nas X
As an actor, you see a sliver of how the show is made, but to see the actual writing process and the re-writing process and the casting process and art direction and set design – all of this is happening in a very intense period. John Slattery
I like the story writing process. I usually use someone who has been trained for structure to take the story that I actually want, place those elements in the right places. Curtis Jackson
I really enjoy the writing process because I can do it from my house. I can create these characters and take them in the different directions that I want to take them. You have a lot of freedom as a writer. Ricky Schroder
I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it. Alice Englert
Traffic’ was an album that had a significant amount of songs. It was not complete and I felt didn’t fully represent me as a person or as the artist I want to be and so when I started the writing process for ‘The Autobiography’ I was really turning a corner in my life. Vic Mensa
In live-action, writing, production, and editing happen in discrete stages. In animation, they overlap – happening simultaneously. This allows a real dialogue to occur between the writer, the director, the actors, and the editor, and it makes the writing process a lot more collaborative and a lot less lonely. Michael Arndt
When I started my writing process for ‘Empty Bank,’ everything had to do with money. It was at a time in my life where I started to see money differently. Jay IDK
The writing process is more… it becomes a case of more like a diary for me. I mean, I write stuff down all day whenever I’m experiencing something that I think would be important for me to look at later on. You know, whether it be for writing lyrics or just for a memory, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I was feeling that way at that time’. Christina Milian
It’s writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that’s broader than just figuring out a song. You’re also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements. Alan Menken
I think it’s important to say typing in the computer is like the last, last phase of my writing process. That’s kind of the fun part. Well, it’s all somewhat fun, I suppose. But usually what happens is I think about a movie for at least a year – maybe a couple more – and I don’t put anything down. Jeff Nichols
My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking – then writing. Jean Craighead George
My writing process hasn’t changed – it’s is the same whether I’m working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper – and get to work. Kathe Koja
My writing process isn’t a very organized thing. Chuck Palahniuk
Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process. Damien Rice
A huge part of my writing process is listening to music as I write, almost creating an unofficial soundtrack to the film I’m working on, a sort of playlist. But the specific songs change rapidly as I write. Panos Cosmatos
You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it’s really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process. Diane Setterfield
Our writing, especially during ‘Boxer’ – the recording process was the writing process, which is not the way I would advise anyone else to do it. Aaron Dessner
I really don’t use that much stuff. I think it’s good to know a few pieces of equipment very well, rather than learn new ones every time. I think it distracts from the writing process. Jon Hopkins
I’m a writer who simply can’t know what I’m writing about until the writing lets me discover it. In a sense, my writing process embraces the gapped nature of my memory process, leaping across spaces that represent all I’ve lost and establishing fresh patterns within all that remains. Floyd Skloot
Of course, when you’re making a documentary, you don’t have actors, but nonetheless, there is a writing process that does take place in the editing room. Rithy Panh
The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‘Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do’. Eminem
When I return to the writing process after being away from it for a while, the first part of it always is being honest with myself: What am I into right now? Is it rock bands and guitars, is it noise, is it dance beats and electronics? Is it space, is it clutter? Trent Reznor
There’s always somebody you can call and go have lunch with and just talk out an idea. And it’s great, because I need that. It’s part of my writing process, to early on sit people down and say, ‘Alright, this film I’m working on…’ and I tell them everything I have. Jeff Nichols
Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I’ve been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process. Laura Hillenbrand
I wasn’t letting people in with the music writing process, and for a long time, I thought I was hard to work with. Tobias Forge
