Top 1200 Writing Essays Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing.

I have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. [...] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [...] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [...] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work.

The best essays come from the moment in which people really need to work something out.

I am waiting impatiently for the day when beleaguered, like-minded academics can order James Wolcott's collected essays for their classes.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have to do.

I aspire to write what are called 'familiar essays.' They begin in the personal and end in the universal. It's not for me to say if I have been successful at it. But that is the hope.

Essays just aren't my thing: no matter how hard I tried, it seemed I was always a bit average.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit.

People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes

I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.

I'm more of a songwriter. I love writing songs. I love writing my songs. It's always been writing for me, and it makes it different when you're writing for yourself.

I really like writing for specific projects. It's a whole different way of writing when you have certain guidelines and a theme you're writing to. It's very inspiring.

I vicariously lived the life of an independent producer from the time I was four years old. And what was always important was writing, writing, writing.

Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn't something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

I love writing. I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.

In college I studied essays with a poet, and so I think my interpretation of the genre was always going to be a little off-kilter.

If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.

Right now-whether you're in writing courses getting "paid" in credit for writing, or burdened and distracted by earning a living and changing diapers-figure out how to make writing an integral part of your life. Publication is good, and gives you the courage to go on, but publication is not as important as the act of writing.

I think my blog is fairly circumspect and elliptical. I've written personal essays, but they are short and to the point: in and out, and that's that.

There are some short essays that are very grave, and most contemporary novels are lighter than air.

I'm a disciple of Raymond Chandler, who said in his essays that there's a quality of redemption in anything that can be called art.

I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part.

If you are making money writing, you are doing great. If you can support yourself writing, you are a success. I don't care if you're writing textbooks or Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for weighty publications of world renown: If you're writing and it's paying the bills, consider yourself a successful writer.

How do our philosophers act? Do they not inscribe their signatures to the very essays they write on the propriety of despising glory.

Most of the time you're writing for radio, you're writing for a label, you're writing to stick a hit, and you end up coming out with something that isn't necessarily genuine.

Journalism is very much public writing, writing with an audience in mind, writing for publication, and frequently writing quickly. And I know that when I worked daily journalism it really affected my patience with literature, which I think requires reflection, and a different kind of engagement.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.

Writing, for me, when I'm writing in the first-person, is like a form of acting. So as I'm writing, the character or self I'm writing about and my whole self - when I began the book - become entwined. It's soon hard to tell them apart. The voice I'm trying to explore directs my own perceptions and thoughts.

I think that writers are best served by sticking to their writing. Not having loads of theories about the best way to position the writing. I think that if the writing is good and the point of view is strong, the writing is going to take care of itself.

On the craft level, writing for children is not so different from writing for adults. You still have to have a story that moves forward. You still have to have the tools of the trade down. The difference arises in the knowledge of who you're writing for. This isn't necessary true of writing for adults.

I was very in my own head as a kid. But I liked it there! I was just writing poetry, writing stories, writing plays. I think I was quite strange. But I was happy.

If there's anything I'm keen to get better at in my writing, then it's the writing of prose as opposed to the writing of dialogue.

The process of re-writing and writing and re-writing means that you may have a brilliant phrase, but over time it distills and distorts and changes.

My high-school papers, my college-application essays, read like Norman Mailer packed in a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich.

Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Most of the time, you're writing for radio, you're writing for a label, you're writing to stick a hit, and you end up coming out with something that isn't necessarily genuine.

The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I'm in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That's my method.

Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.

You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.

Gunn would be an important figure-rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring-in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now seems; he would be an important figure in the history of gay writing and in the history of transatlantic literary relations even were his poetry not so good as it is. With his life as it was and his works as they are, he's an obvious candidate for a volume of retrospective and critical essays, and this one is first-rate.

I didn't really have a major role in how it was described. I wanted it to be a collection of essays where each storyline could be contained.

I enjoyed writing in school. I don't know that I was all that good at it in school. I worked at it later. I feel comfortable writing now. I enjoy writing now. I suspect, like most college students, I viewed writing then to be more tedious.

I have to say that writing about my writing process is more daunting than writing non-fiction.

I have more than 100 legal pads filled with handwriting. Eight novels, two books for children, countless stories and essays.

(Francis) Bacon's best known writings are his essays. They are loved for many reasons, such as their being so short.

I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like: What I'm going to be if I grow up.

It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.

At university level, I had an economics lecturer who used to joke that I was the only student who handed in essays on British Airways notepaper.

Writing for adults and writing for young people is really not that different. As a reporter, I have always tried to write as clearly and simply as possible. I like clean, unadorned writing. So writing for a younger audience was largely an exercise in making my prose even more clear and direct, and in avoiding complicated digressions.

the wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts of science.

For books, I don't read much fiction, but like travel essays and good pop-science.

I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

I went to Marion College for writing and I was kicked out of the writing school. I was asked to leave the writing program because I was corrupting the other students.

Drama school is fundamentally practical. I didn't write any essays, so I came out with a BA honors degree in acting.

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.