Top 1200 Writing For Yourself Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

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.

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. ... I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14-to meet women. ... If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. ... My songs are like my kids.

[Writing a joke] there is no team of writers. It's just you in an office, staring at yourself in the mirror.

If you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself, except in some short-term, psych-up, superficial way.

You become a writer on a television show, and you see yourself doing bigger and better things, you don't wait till they tell you, "Here's the way to do bigger and better things," you start writing. You start writing that material that you might be doing off to the side. Nobody's going to be paying you for that, but it could turn into something big.

I don't know about writing. It's quite lonely. You have to have a lot of patience with yourself.

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.

Writing is a really good first step toward that goal of knowing yourself.

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.

Once you have established yourself as a center of love and kindness radiating throughout your being, which amounts to a cradling of yourself in loving kindness and acceptance, you can dwell here indefinitely, drinking at this fount, bathing it in, renewing yourself, nourishing yourself, enlivening yourself. This can be a profoundly healing practice for body and soul.

Anytime you put yourself in a creative box, it's going to stifle you; it's not conducive to the writing or recording process.

Autobiographies, for the most part, to me, are like writing a love letter to yourself.

That thing you had to force yourself to do-the actual act of writing-turns out to be the best part.

Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To leap. To fly. To fail.

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.

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.

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 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.

I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers.

I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings.

Recipe for success: Be polite, prepare yourself for whatever you are asked to do, keep yourself tidy, be cheerful, don't be envious, be honest with yourself so you will be honest with others, be helpful, interest yourself in your job, don't pity yourself, be quick to praise, be loyal to your friends, avoid prejudices, be independent, interest yourself in politics, and read the newspapers.

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.

Managing yourself, writing and performing your own music can teach you a lot.

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.

It takes time to understand yourself, to go inside yourself and to question yourself and really take yourself to task. That's self-expression.

The only failure in writing is when you stop doing it. Then you fail yourself.

You learn so much with each book, but it's what you teach yourself by writing your own books and by reading good books written by other people - that's the key. You don't want to worry too much about other people's responses to your work, not during the writing and not after. You just need to read and write, and keep going.

The difference between writing where you know where to draw the line and writing where you're being way too mean is whether you can tell that the writer is not talking to family or friends anymore. Generally, if you say something bad about somebody on stage, you need to say two bad things about yourself. A lot of times, I think I'm the worst person in the room.

When you come from the wrestling world, you are taught to do everything for yourself: market yourself, plan for yourself, design for yourself.

The act of writing a song involves a degree of letting go of yourself, and that's very much being a child.

Whether you're acting or you're writing, your skin is just basically ripped off and you're putting yourself out there. At least the acting part comes with a bit more social interaction. And you're a bit less isolated because you are working with the director and the crew, and there's a general camaraderie. Writing, you're totally isolated. You're just trying to get the words on paper.

Writing is like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer. It always feels good when you finish.

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.

There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.

I always treated writing as a profession, never as a hobby. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will.

Writing is like a bird-watcher watching for birds: the stories are there: you just have to train yourself to look for them.

I feel like writing music is a great chance to create something that extends beyond yourself.

Anytime you're sitting there writing a book about yourself, it's a pretty self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess.

I learned the enormous power of writing for yourself, especially now that people seem to be receptive to the fact that women can write.

Writing is weaponized empathy. It's putting yourself in someone else's head. It's finding what's in them that relates to you.

I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers.

Love yourself not in some egocentric, self-serving sense but love yourself the way you would love your friend in the sense of taking care of yourself, nourishing yourself, trying to understand, comfort, and strengthen yourself.

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.

Writing original songs is much, much harder (I think) because you only have yourself to conjure up EVERY single moment a listener is going to hear. It's a craft that goes directly from your brain to their ears. You can never be sure that what you're writing is gonna be good enough to keep a listener engaged and truly experience something. It's a shot in the dark.

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.

Be kind to yourself this evening. Buy something for yourself. Treat yourself to a meal. Look in the mirror and give yourself a smile

You're too busy writing the next book to worry about Googling yourself all the time.

Learn how to program and play lots of games. If you find yourself capable of writing a game, someday you'll be capable of writing a really good game. My dad's a writer, and when you ask him how to learn to write, he says, "write." So basically, do it and keep doing it until you get good.

Use the creative process - singing, writing, art, dance, whatever - to get to know yourself better.

I always dreamed, when I started writing music, to find a way of immersing yourself in it.

You know, I've sung a lot of emotional songs in my life, but when you're writing it yourself, it's very difficult to decide what to reveal.

Writing in the first person, you immediately open yourself up to the idea that there's a connection between you and the narrator.

Forgive yourself for not being the richest, the thinnest, the tallest, the one with the best hair. Forgive yourself for not being the most successful, the cutest or the one with the fastest time. Forgive yourself for not winning every round. Forgive yourself for being afraid. But don’t let yourself off the hook, never forgive yourself, for not caring or not trying.

There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.

Writing is very different to having your photo taken. You are exposing yourself more, not physically but emotionally.

The joy of writing drama is putting yourself into different people's heads.

I can't remove the autobiographical slant from the things I write. You always bring yourself into what you're writing.

What's great is that starting a blog can get you lot of attention for your writing. But it doesn't have to be for anybody other than yourself.

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told.

The fact of picking up an instrument and writing a song and expressing yourself publicly has a powerful political dimension.