Top 1200 Writing Things Down Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

I enjoy writing, sometimes; I think that most writers will tell you about the agony of writing more than the joy of writing, but writing is what I was meant to do.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

As for not getting things right: I constantly rerun social situations/conversations I experience/have throughout my head, and I'm always writing them down in notebooks or in word documents/the Internet. I feel like these habits and a generally good memory of people/the interactions I have with them (due to studying people having always been my main interest in life) have lead me to being very accurate in things I write in stories/essays.

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.

I always felt that nobody was going to understand me, going to understand what I felt about things. I guess that's why I started writing. At least on paper I could put down what I thought.

One of the things that made me try writing novels was I could take time off to be with the kids. That's the practical side of what I love about the writing life.

I can draw pencil lines to show something is moving, but if I'm writing, I struggle with how to write it. The boy ran down the hallway? The boy ran quickly down the hallway? The boy ran down the marble hallway? I agonize over the words. So my editor works very hard. I'm lucky to have her.

Writing has taught me a lot - though far from everything - about writing, so as time has passed, it has become more pleasurable if not easier. I've done other things in life, but writing is by a factor of 10 the most difficult among them. And, of course, you never achieve what you set out to achieve, so you must keep on trying to do better.

A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing.

At its best, writing is a dialogue. It's one of the things I love about children's: the fact that this dialogue is really there from the get-go, from the start of writing.

As an actor, I never really had a strategy. I just take projects, as they come. It all comes down to the writing, at the end of the day, for me. I don't care if it's a two-line cameo or the lead of the thing, as long as the project has some weight behind the writing and it's interesting and I think people will enjoy it.

Distractions have never prevented a Writing Writer Who Writes from writing; distractions are an excuse proffered by Non-Writing Non-Writers Who are Not-Writing for why they are not writing.

There have been times when things get stuck in my throat, but you just work it up or down. Like how a swimmer probably can't imagine drowning - their bodies are so used to being in the water. I'm so used to shoving things down my throat.

I wasn't one of those kids who grew up wanting to write or who read a particular book and thought: 'I want to do that!' I always told stories and wrote them down, but I never thought writing was a career path, even though, clearly, someone was writing the books and newspapers and magazines.

The challenges of writing a book are very different from writing a blog or tweets. I've been writing a blog since I was in the 6th grade, so I had this style of writing that was definitely not proper for writing a book.

Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.

There are so many things that come into writing a recipe, and it's really important if you're writing for home cooks to be cooking like you are at home.

There's exceptional work being done on television. Some of our great writers are writing for television. When you have things to choose from, you typically go after the writing - unless you're going after the money. There are fewer opportunities in film to make money with good writing, unless you're an action hero.

I love a lot of American writers, but I think that for the most part the scope of what's accepted as great American writing is very limited. What we have is good, but it's limited. There's not enough engagement with the world. Our literature's not adventurous enough. The influence of MFA writing tends to make things repetitive. The idea that writing can be taught has changed the whole conversation in the U.S.

To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most—suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another—are defeated. This work is not done as a job, ladies and gentlemen, it is done out of love for the art and the artists who brought it forth, and who still bring it forth to us, down the years and across ignorance and chaos and borderlines.

Some things lend themselves well to songs, some things don't, and I'm learning that a lot at the moment. It's still a relatively new way of writing. It's only really the last five to 10 years that I've taken my writing seriously in this way, as something I can keep working toward. I think I feel myself much more before as simply a songwriter.

I write down three things in the morning that I want to accomplish, but I write it down as if I have already accomplished it. So you write it down three times. And then in the daytime, like near the afternoon, you write it down six times. Then at night, you write it down nine times.

Things don't weigh me down any more. I confront things, and I move on. I don't dwell on things; I don't let things simmer under the surface. I am where it starts and where it ends. I have the power in my life to be happy.

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

I like acting and things when I like the writing. If I don't like the writing, I don't like acting. I think in some ways everything starts for me from the place of writing.

I discovered that I, a writer of what is known as creative nonfiction, could do the research and bridge the gap in my books and lectures through true storytelling. This is not 'dumbing down' or writing for eighth graders. It is writing for readers across cultures, age barriers, social and political landscapes.

When I'm writing songs, I write visually. When I'm writing the words down and I listen to the melody and the lyrics, I start seeing the video form. And if I can get through a song and from the beginning to the end have the whole video in my mind, I think that's a great song.

For me, a lot of Discipline was very personal writing, like writing through and working out being inside this gendered body and also the compulsions of the body, the muting of the mind as driven by the body. My father had died some years ago so he haunts the book too, just floats through it ghost-like. But, the writing of every book is different for me. They are so like living creatures, these books, so I don't know what's carried over into the writing of the next things - except maybe that I'm best when I make my writing practice a routine.

I think that the joy of writing a novel is the self-exploratio n that emerges and also that wonderful feeling of playing God with the characters. When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. ... I think the most important thing for a writer is to be locked in a study.

As far as the writing goes, I started telling stories as soon as I could talk, and started writing them down as soon as I could string words together.

I could always imagine more interesting places to be than where I was. And more interesting people than me being there. Eventually, this led to making up stories and writing things down.

I carry around a little journal with me, a little notebook and a pen and just write all the time. Not necessarily actually sitting down and writing lyrics, just free-form writing, whatever's going on in my mind.

I write about heartbreak because I like writing about sad things, but I'm writing happy songs, too!

One of the things everybody seems to want to ask writers is, "Where do you get your ideas?" When people ask me this, my usual response is, "Ideas are the easy part. The hard part is writing them down."

Many times, what people call 'writer's block' is the confusion that happens when a writer has a great idea, but their writing skill is not up to the task of putting that idea down on paper. I think that learning the craft of writing is critical.

I finally realized that my relaxation is practicing the piano and writing. I've tried to do other things, but I've learned through the decades, that this is what I enjoy, practicing music and writing.

What I hope my writing reflects... is a sense of the connections between all human beings... and a different perspective on the true nature of courage. For me, those are things worth exploring and writing about.

I don't generate a storyline and then fill it out in the course of writing. The story actually generates in the course of the writing. It's one of the reasons I've never been comfortable doing screenplays, because in order to get the contract for the screenplay, you have to sit down and tell them what's going to happen.

Writing about real stuff that really concerned me brought out my craft. If you're writing a story about, 'Is Lois Lane gonna figure out that Superman is Clark Kent?' - it's really hard to get involved in that on anything other than a craft level. And I'm not gonna put down craftsmanship; it is a noble enough thing to have made a table that you can pound on and it doesn't fall down. But occasionally, we might have an assignment that engages some other parts of ourselves, and those tend to be the good stories.

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.

Trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry, trickle-down misogyny, all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America.

Write down everything you can think of, no matter how stupid it seems. I always write down my thoughts throughout the day. Sometimes good things come out of it, and I'll find an idea to develop into a song, so my best advice is to try and draw inspiration from everyday things.

There are some people who have been reading me for years, and they keep saying kind things about the writing. That's what you're writing for, to get people to respond to it.

Writing is a way of getting at the things most people would prefer to escape. Writing takes me to the center of life. That's my invitation to my readers as well.

Even when I'm writing in character I'm normally still writing about things I know or things that have happened to me or using that character to start an exploration of my own consciousness. Really though, any character that you can examine is just an examination of a part of your own consciousness.

It never occurred to me that there was anything odd about writing my own music, and so I used to just jot down little ditties and things like that. And it was only in later years I suppose when I was about nine or so, that I realised there was this thing called composing.

Always, at the end of every book, there are things you will be unsatisfied with, and still more things that later on you will realize were not right. But mistakes are part of what a book is. That itchy, dissatisfied feeling at the end of a novel is useful. It's what keeps you writing and gets you writing the next one. It's what keeps you learning.

One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.

It's just that if you're not disruptive everything seems to be repeated endlessly - not so much the good things but the bland things - the ordinary things - the weaker things get repeated- the stronger things get suppressed and held down and hidden.

When you sit down to write a film, you direct it in your head. If you are writing a scene, you are watching the scene. And maybe it's different when you are writing a novel because you are thinking of it in terms of being read. But films are only consumed one way - through the eyes and the ears.

I released that I could crank out a song if I practiced it a lot. If I am in the practice of writing songs everyday or every other day, getting ideas and following through with them, and not just saying "I've got this idea, but I will get to it at some point." If I actually sit down and not be lazy, and follow through with it then you just get in the practice of doing things. It feels very productive, and then it gets a lot easier, because you are working the muscle in your brain. The "song-writing muscle" so to speak.

More than this, I believe that the only lastingly important form of writing is writing for children. It is writing that is carried in the reader's heart for a lifetime; it is writing that speaks to the future.

I love comedy and I would write things to myself as an exercise in writing. I didn't do well for years, and I quit. I started to break down why I was afraid and started to look at people I admired, like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Freddie Prinze, George Carlin and all.

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

In a sense, journalism can be both helpful and detrimental to a writer of fiction because the kind of writing you need to do as a journalist is so different. It has to be clear, unambiguous, concise, and as a writer often you are trying to do things that are more ambiguous. I find that writing fiction is often an antidote to reading and writing too much journalism.

Open this notebook every day and write down half a page at the very least. If you have nothing to write down, then at least, following Gogol’s advice, write down that today there’s nothing to write. Always write with attention and look on writing as a holiday.

The way I write is, I listen to things in my head, and then I copy them down. I memorize conversations and things like that; I seem to be able to do that pretty well. I suppose in that respect there's some improvisation, although I work over the stuff after I've got it down on paper.

I try not to think of actors as I'm writing because I think you do them a disservice by writing for things they've already done.

What comics sacrifice and what lives they live - I know that most of their lives, their adult lives, they're sitting around or walking around with notebooks, writing things down. Usually they're fairly sensitive. Usually they're very bright. And that makes them poets.

Honestly, the choice is: I can be a cheerful person, more awake to correction, more of a force for good ... when I'm writing. Or I can be the opposite of all those things, when I'm not writing.