Creative Writers Famous Quotes & Sayings
100 Creative Writers Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy.— Zadie Smith
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 anyway.— Junot Diaz
[Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009]
Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness. There exists a striking association between creativity and manic depression. Why are more creative people prone to madness? They have more than average amounts of energies and abilities to see things in a fresh and original way - then because they also have depression, I think they're more in touch with human suffering.— Nick Flynn
TV is very much my first love. I love this world. It's where writers have the most creative control, and I just love that.— Melissa Rosenberg
I like working among 'creative clutter'. It gives me a sense of activity and achievement.— Fennel Hudson
What happens is that the experience of writers working together and the idea of creative collaboration is so delightful, but it has been relegated to TV.— Akiva Goldsman
I always thought it would be funny to have the Parents Television Council write an episode of 'Family Guy' and give them full creative control. Then see how good the episode is. That's something we've actually discussed in the writers' room. We haven't proposed it yet, but if somebody from the PTC reads this, it might be worth discussing.— Seth MacFarlane
The irritating question they ask us— Neil Gaiman
us being writers
is: "Where do you get your ideas?"
And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra!
Being a creative person. It's so much more rewarding when you find things on your own, to live whatever the writers are writing or to display what the director is looking for. You are the thing that everybody uses to get the story out.— Laura Bell Bundy
I've noticed over the past years of my writerly life that women writers in particular are discouraged in cleverly disguised forms from including the intellectual in their creative material way more than you would believe.— Lidia Yuknavitch
Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are.— Jo Deurbrouck
The National Book Festival is a great way for families and friends to share the creative works of some of America's most-loved authors, .. Readers of all ages can listen to favorite writers speaking about their books, have books autographed, meet many storybook characters and enjoy a day on the National Mall.— Laura Bush
I believe that a writer learns from every story he writes, and when you try different things, you learn different lessons. Working with other writers, as in Hollywood or in a shared world series, will also strengthen your skills, by exposing you to new ways of seeing the work, and different approaches to certain creative challenges.— George R R Martin
Fantasy works inwards upon its author, blurring the boundary between the visioned and the actual, and associating itself ever moreclosely with the Ego, so that the child who has fantasied himself a murderer ends by becoming a Loeb or a Leopold. The creative Imagination works outwards, steadily increasing the gap between the visioned and the actual, till this becomes the great gulf fixed between art and nature. Few writers of crime-stories become murderers— Dorothy L. Sayers
if any do, it is not the result of identifying themselves with their murderous heroes.
In 1829 Rossini was at an age which has often proven critical in the lives of musicians, painters and writers. Lapses into silence far more complete than Rossini's, creative failures, suicides, and unanticipated deaths have been common in the middle to late 30s. As Charles Rosen has noted, 'It is the age when the most fluent composer begins to lose the ease of inspiration he once possessed, when even Mozart had to make sketches and to revise'.— Richard Osborne
At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind.— Kilroy J. Oldster
The word 'creative' refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction - that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events - in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.— Lee Gutkind
Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.— David Foster Wallace
[When asked for her advice to aspiring writers] Run! Just kidding. Sort of. Really, I think the best advice I can give is to wait for the book that compels you to write it-- the one that you eat, sleep, and breathe.— Kealohilani
If you try to force yourself to create an epic story, you will feel the ensuing drudgery quite acutely-- and worse, your readers will feel it too.
Conversely, if you wait for the book that won't leave you alone until you finish it, your readers will feel that energy and it will make it difficult for them to put the book down until they have finished it!
![Creative Writers Sayings By Kealohilani: [When asked for her advice to aspiring writers] Run! Just kidding. Sort of. Really, I](https://www.greatsayings.net/images/creative-writers-sayings-by-kealohilani-885910.jpg "Creative Writers Sayings By Kealohilani: [When asked for her advice to aspiring writers] Run! Just kidding. Sort of. Really, I")
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
It comes a point in which you don't know if you write books or the books write you— Robin Sacredfire
After so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns. That's why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves.— Twyla Tharp
What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse.— Ray Bradbury
A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.— Jay McInerney
Most of what I do is for creative people - writers and painters and photographers - trying to work through creative problems.— Jessa Crispin
i write— Sanober Khan
because
it is
the only way
i can
reach you.
Described as a "workaholic speed-writing freak" by fellow writers, a "creative writing class drill sergeant" by his writing 'padawans', Voinov is a self-confessed geek and has enlarged his days by 12 secret hours in return for the sacrifice of ten albino virgin pygmy hippos.— Aleksandr Voinov
Some creative writing programs seem evil, but my experience at Irvine was totally the opposite, where I feel like they were really good at focusing in on each writers voice and setting. When I felt like I was obligated to write a story that was more typical, no one really liked it.— Aimee Bender
Still, I wonder if more women artists, musicians and writers aren't household names because we don't have enough faith in our own pursuits to give ourselves the time we desperately need to be transformed by a creative vision. Maybe that glass ceiling isn't really made of glass at all, but of sticky little fingers, dishes piled in the sink, and mortgages that demand two incomes.— Holly Robinson
The dreamtime of creative work is a turnstile to eternity. (from Workbok)— Steven Heighton
What is hell to a writer? Hell is being too busy to find the time to write or being unable to find the inspiration. Hell is suddenly finding the words but being away from your notebook or typewriter. Hell is when the verses slip away through your fingers and they never return again.— R.M. Engelhardt
Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about this process. I joke about it: My kids have made me a better person, and I only need, like, 34 more of them to be a really good guy.— Jim Gaffigan
Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?— Connie Willis
Writers and actors have some creative ground in common, and so when you're writing a scene and hoping to convey a mood it's not the worst idea to try to put that mood into your headspace -- feel it, if only a little. I'm not saying you have to kill a kitten or punch your mother to feel something -- I just mean, stir up the memory of certain emotions if not the emotion itself. Same way an actor might think about a sad moment to conjure tears on-camera. 23.— Chuck Wendig
An attraction to self-discovery and self-expression can be uplifting and assist us combat epic boredom. The toll of writing truthfully as possible can cause the writer to spiral emotionally out of control. Writing's tempest temperament can prove a fatal attraction and many notable writers succumbed to the dark knight's powerful sword. Too many writers and a cast of dead poets found themselves dangerously adrift on the flowing river of black ink interlocked in a life and death struggle with the creative streams of impulsion colliding with the rocky pods of madness. All artists must fight off the impulse to surrender to the aftershock of madness. The mad vein of stabbing pain that we might think belongs exclusively to ourselves is in actuality the capstone of the blood sport known as communal anxiety.— Kilroy J. Oldster
Most people assume I write at night because of the kind of books I write, but I can shut out the light with my mind.— Carla H. Krueger
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
I think television keeps on being a place where writers can go, and if they're successful, they can have their way, and they can have creative freedom.— James L. Brooks
There's still too much energy leftover at this tomb-desk, on Broadway, when I am semi-asleep at night in our bedroom, struggling to get a good night's rest. There's an overflow of loin energy. It spills out from my pores as if I were a cracked drum of reacting chemicals. I need to work to expend this excess energy in words, stories and books ... My mind is a body that's a mind.— Sergio Troncoso
... The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper, chop them, erase them, pulverise them and start again. Don't whine when things are not going your way, because they are going the right way for The Book, which is more important. The show must go on, and so must The Book.— E.A. Bucchianeri
Like Thornton Wilder said, time is not a river, but rather a landscape that you step in and out of. I've always found that true of creative work, and I've heard so many songwriters and writers in general say the same thing. When you're going into the realms of your self and trying to tap into the mystery of this creative source, linear time kind of falls away.— Rosanne Cash
Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.— Virginia Woolf
From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment.— Garry Disher
Art manifests itself in paradoxical ways. At times it creates and at times it gets created!— Avijeet Das
Beautiful publishers say beautiful things and then We're sorry, but no... and then more beautiful things. It's a shit sandwich with branston pickle and melted gouda.— Kate Inglis
I read it out loud to the kids. I stick it to the fridge with the others. Some writers do that because it turns their crank to have a Wall of Publishers Who Passed And Will Someday Regret It. I don't. Each one is, really and truly, a gift. We look at them and the boys and I talk about rejection, all kinds of it. Creative, karmic, romantic. Nothing works out until something does.
In fiction, there happens to be a long history of creative engagement with marginality, with the very human components of society that others don't want to think about, from writers such as Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud to Genet and Sarrazin and right on up to Norman Mailer.— Rachel Kushner
In movies, books & even music, to me, the true artist is the writer. Writers have to begin the creative process by making nothing into something before it can ever manifest into anything.— Chris Mentillo
When you collaborate with someone else on something creative, you get to places that you would never get to on your own. The way an idea builds as it careens back and forth between good writers is so unpredictable. Sometimes it depends on people misunderstanding each other, and that's why I don't think there's any such thing as a mistake in the creative process. You never know where it might lead.— John Cleese
Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.— James A. Michener
People wonder when you're allowed to call yourself a writer. I think maybe the answer is when you recognize that is work." - Nina MacLaughlin, 'With Compliments— Manjula Martin
Neither black/red/yellow nor woman but poet or writer. For many of us, the question of priorities remains a crucial issue. Being merely "a writer" without a doubt ensures one a status of far greater weight than being "a woman of color who writes" ever does. Imputing race or sex to the creative act has long been a means by which the literary establishment cheapens and discredits the achievements of non-mainstream women writers. She who "happens to be" a (non-white) Third World member, a woman, and a writer is bound to go through the ordeal of exposing her work to the abuse and praises and criticisms that either ignore, dispense with, or overemphasize her racial and sexual attributes. Yet the time has passed when she can confidently identify herself with a profession or artistic vocation without questioning and relating it to her color-woman condition.— Trinh T. Minh-ha
Characters are limbs that writers use to kill with.— Joseph Eastwood
Here's a news flash— Victoria Laurie
writers are selfish people. Truth is, creative types like me are driven by one impulse
to make up a world in which we get to control everything and everyone. We decide who enters and who exits, what the weather will be, who will hook up with whom, who will win and who will lose. It makes us feel powerful and, in all honesty, has relatively little to do with thinking about what will make anyone else happy.
Discover the times when you're most creative - mornings, nights, afternoons - and clear the time to work then. Many writers find the mornings are best, and the afternoons are only good for editorial corrections, or getting the washing done. Others can only work through the night, drunk.— Deborah Moggach
At that moment, sitting on that park bench, The Writer was overcome by an indefinable sadness not completely ascribable to the state in which The Mother was now, nor the desperation of his decades-long creative crisis, a sadness so strong he could have peddle it to all the enthusiasts in the world and turned them into depressives, and would still have some left over. Because he no longer knew what to do with so much sadness. And sometimes he didn't even know what to do with himself.— Filippo Bologna
The great leaders of business, industry, finance, and the great artists, musicians, poets, and writers became great, because they developed the faculty of creative imagination.— Napoleon Hill
Writing is the high alchemy of the soul that combines words and ideas to create magic.— Sharif Khan
An invisible, yet active current of mental energy, underscores any book as well as any other form of artistic creation. A creative burst of psychological energy ignites any creative project. The emotional energy that underlies the artistic work propels it forward endowing it with articulation, texture, rhythm, and movement. When the expressive energy of the artist flags, the work comes to a stopping point and it takes on its final composition.— Kilroy J. Oldster
There's the real world, with all its annoying facts and rules. In the real world, there are things that are true and things that aren't. Mostly the real world s-s-s-suh-sucks. But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought - in an inscape - every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history. Creative people, like writers, and Henry Rollins, spend a lot of their time hanging out in their thoughtworld. S-s-strong creatives, though, can use a knife to cut the stitches between the two worlds, can bring them together. Your bike. My tiles. Those are our knives. She— Joe Hill
Something I notice speaking to writers from south of Hadrian's Wall is that the culture is different. At base, I think Scotland values its creative industries differently from England.— Sara Sheridan
Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is the prewriting stage, the talking, brainstorming, the narrative arc and the character sketches.— Jenna Bush
![Creative Writers Sayings By Jenna Bush: Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is](https://www.greatsayings.net/images/creative-writers-sayings-by-jenna-bush-505985.jpg "Creative Writers Sayings By Jenna Bush: Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is")
The Greeks were so committed to ideas as supernatural forces that they created an entire group of goddesses (not one but nine) to represent creative power; the opening lines of both The Iliad and The Odyssey begin with calls to them. These nine goddesses, or muses, were the recipients of prayers from writers, engineers, and musicians. Even the great minds of the time, like Socrates and Plato, built shrines and visited temples dedicated to their particular muse (or muses, for those who hedged their bets). Right now, under our very secular noses, we honor these beliefs in our language, as the etymology of words like museum ("place of the muses") and music ("art of the muses") come from the Greek heritage of ideas as superhuman forces.— Scott Berkun
It is appropriate to speak of the artisans as possessed of wisdom (and not just "skill"), because the biblical writers share the understanding common to most traditional societies that the active form of wisdom is good work. Wisdom does not consist only in sound intellectual work; any activity that stands in a consistently productive relationship to the material world and nurtures the creative imagination qualifies as wise.— Ellen F. Davis
Isn't it strange how the most lethal cynics are often the most optimistic creative dreamers?— Robert Black
Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.— Robert McKee
Writing is like daydreaming through your fingers.— Jenna Alatari
Being an author is to have a toe in the creative pool and a foot in the vat of commerce.— Fennel Hudson
Writers think with their soul and draft from their heart— Lisa Fantino
Writers always have confidence issues - it comes with the territory. We never know where we fit in, or what the actual value of our work might be. So we hit lulls, or slogs. Throw in the idea that many creative people are somewhat manic-depressive, and it can get pretty dark at times.— R.A. Salvatore
When you're doing a pilot, you're doing it in this bubble that almost works against the creative impulse. You don't have time to get to know the actors first, and you have three writers, as opposed to a room full of writers.— Josh Gad
I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.— Henning Mankell
Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.— Elizabeth Bowen
Tips can make someone a better writer but not necessarily a good writer. That's a larger package - a matter of character. Golfing is more than keeping the left arm straight. Every good golfer is a complex engine that runs on ability, ego, determination, discipline, patience, confidence, and other qualities that are self-taught. So it is with writers and all creative artists. If their values are solid their work is likely to be solid.— William Zinsser
I understand that each one of us works at a different speed, and has a slightly different process. I understand that these writers are painstaking, wanting each sentence-each word-to carry weight ... I know it's not laziness, but respect for the work, and I understand from my own work that haste makes waste. But I also understand that life is short, and that in the end, none of us is prolific. The creative spark dims, and then death puts it out. William Shakespeare, for instance, hasn't produced a new play for 400 years. That, my friends, is a long dry spell.— Stephen King
The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.— Vernor Vinge
to be a poet means— Sanober Khan
to live
with a permanent wound
forever
susceptible
to either
the shade
of the sky
or someone's eyes.
What politicians want and what creative writers want will always be profoundly different, because I'm afraid all politicians, of whatever hue, want propaganda, and writers want the truth, and they're not compatible.— David Hare
Write at a pace that doesn't surpass your creative flow. Don't be hasty; don't be sloppy. Don't forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and you'll find that it is harder to make bad writing good than to make good writing better.— Richelle E. Goodrich
Ugh, writer's block. The best thing to do is to forget about everything you're trying to do. Get away from your writing station, kick your feet up and relax. Then allow your mind to just wander. Don't stop it. Just let yourself think of anything, no mater how silly the thoughts seem. Remember, not to judge these thoughts. This will open up your creative receptors. You'll begin to think outside the box. Then the good stuff will start racing through you. That's when you start writing!— La Tisha Honor
It is true that the discerning intellect of the world is always much in advance of the creative, so that there are competent judges of the best book, and few writers of the best books.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion.— Red Haircrow
You sought to preserve your creative instincts and what would nourish them. But neurosis itself does not nourish the artist, you know; he creates in spite of it, out of anything, any material given to him. The torments and hells of [crazy men], are not for you.— Anais Nin
People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.— Marie-Louise Von Franz
The lesson here is not to take Camus to the beach.— Leo X. Robertson
I'm always impressed with the way the writers find new and creative ways of killing people. But my favourite has to be the hat pin through the ear.— John Nettles
And I have the support of the writers: I have a great relationship with the creative team, and they have a good hold of my character and my personality, and they come up with some great stuff, and I'm forever trying to change it up, keep it fresh.— Trish Stratus
It is "vibration" that creates our world. Everyone vibrates. We always utter words in our mind. Thus we create sounds continuously. Frequency differs. Tuning your frequency brings the differences. A good writer has the creativity to polish the broken piano to tune it up in a right tune. Reading their books is the key to choose your favorite frequencies. Now start vibrating and note it down.— Surajit Sarkar
Another mistake is presenting too much background information, and doing so in the first few pages. Writers should begin their stories with the event that kicks off the story, and then spoon-feed us background information only when it's needed to understand what's going on."— Evan Marshall
[A Conversation with Evan Marshall (Writers Write, September 1999)]
Musicians have notes. Painters have paint. Writers have words.— Lisa Fantino
The effects of MFA programs, and the rise of creative writing instruction more generally, are far more diffuse than people think. Even if you're a writer who has avoided institutions your whole life, you're still going to be reading a lot of writers who have MFAs, and are affiliated with universities.— Chad Harbach
There are two gradations of cold that are always acceptable: Mild Frost, which is preferable for reading and writing and any other activity done indoors, and Absolute Zero, which is the only temperature suitable for sleep. There is nothing more delicious than being swathed in a cocoon of blankets and awaking with a nose frosted over with rime, and once I do achieve vampiric heights and fall asleep with the mastery of a corpse lately dead, I am best left alone until I wake up at my usual time. I do tend to bite when rattled out of my flocculent coffin, and everyone in my building knows never to disturb me during the early morning hours. Authors, being crepuscular creatures, should never be roused before 11am: the creative mind is never turned off; it only dies momentarily and its revived by the scent of coffee at the proper time.— Michelle Franklin
Bacon is also an acceptable restorative.
When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing, and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry.— Edward Hirsch
To annoy or piss off are light offences. I'd say if you abuse the goodness of a novelist or a writer, the truth is, he or she can kill you multiple times or cannibalise you in many antagonist characters.— Angelica Hopes
you are— Sanober Khan
so delicious
to my poetic side.
Not only was he not mad, but he was a musician, and my favorite men had always been musicians or writers or anything that involved the creative process and behaving like tortured artists ... I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac.— Marian Keyes
I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients. Account executives often have big creative ideas, regardless of what some writers think.— Leo Burnett
Forward-thinking organizations seek hybrid professionals who are highly proficient writers, analytical, creative, and tech savvy, with strong competencies in business management, information technology (IT), and human behavior.— Paul Roetzer
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.— E. M. Forster
Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative.— Michel Faber
In America, writers are afforded the freedom to express themselves in unlimited manners. Creative liberty is a privilege.— Michael Graves
