#process

I sat down and tried to write a story. "Ian MacArthur is a wonderful sweet fellow who wears glasses and peers out of them with delight." That was the first sentence. The problem was that I just couldn't think of the next one. After cleaning my room three times, I decided to leave Ian alone for a while because I was starting to get mad at him. ↗

— Stephen Chbosky

#funny #humor #writer-s-block #writing #writing-process

People who think that grammar is just a collection of rules and restrictions are wrong. If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links things and brings opposites together. Grammar is a wonderful way of organising the world how you'd like it to be. ↗

— Delphine de Vigan

#grammar

Writing is a struggle against silence. ↗

— Carlos Fuentes

#writing-process

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard." (Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4) ↗

— David McCullough

#creative-process #precision #thinking #thought #writing

Don't write about Man; write about a man. ↗

— E.B. White

#the-writing-process #writing-process

My life will be the best illustration of all my work. ↗

— Hans Christian Andersen

#illustration #life #work #writing #writing-process

In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, 'I don't think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn't the way people write.' I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn't done deliberately. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#writing-process

Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things. ↗

— Harlan Ellison

#writing-process

Sometimes I scare myself at how easily I slip inside my mind and live vicariously through these characters. ↗

— Teresa Mummert

#reality #writing #writing-process #writing-process

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#creative-process #writing #writing-process