Top 44 Writing Process Quotes

When I am working on an epic-length book, the writing process is fairly long. It takes from four to five years to get through all the drafts. The book is done when I am exhausted.

I really don’t use that much stuff. I think it’s good to know a few pieces of equipment very well, rather than learn new ones every time. I think it distracts from the writing process.

I worked initially in very low-budget independent films that I often wrote. My early work was all written by myself, and then I adapted ‘Tsotsi,’ so I was used to the writing process being, in a way, integral to my directing. I felt it really prepared me.

You have to relax, write what you write. It sounds easy but it’s really, really hard. One of the things it took me longest to learn was to trust the writing process.

I was in the middle of filming Season 3 of ‘Grace and Frankie.’ Then the writing process for ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ was happening at the exact same time. And then the pre-production for ‘Fatherless’ was happening at the exact same time as well.

I grew up on film sets but more around the process of making films. I saw a lot of the editing process and the writing process, which takes years. That really affected me growing up, that side of it.

There is something unwholesome and destructive about the entire writing process.

Writers often like to talk about how intuitive the writing process is, but in truth, building a book is a remarkably unintuitive task. Or, to put it more accurately, you need a lot more than intuition. You need plot and characters. You need a setting. You need a theme that is relevant and supported by your text.

In the writing process, the more a story cooks, the better.

In ‘Snow White and the Hunstman,’ when we see them in the Dark Forest, you’re allowed a lot of freedom to be able to cutaway to, for instance, the prince. That B and C story stuff helps the writing process, even though it makes it a more complicated movie.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‘Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do’.

I think it’s important to say typing in the computer is like the last, last phase of my writing process. That’s kind of the fun part. Well, it’s all somewhat fun, I suppose. But usually what happens is I think about a movie for at least a year – maybe a couple more – and I don’t put anything down.

The real writing of a piece comes only when you are performing it. It is why I like theatre. In film and TV, the image is locked forever, but in theatre, there is constant change; each performance is part of the writing process.

My writing process hasn’t changed – it’s is the same whether I’m working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper – and get to work.

If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there’s too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.

Early on in the writing process, there is sometimes this temptation to write around the central drama instead of just aiming for the bull’s-eye. The bullseye is harder to hit, of course, but it’s so much more satisfying when you do.

Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‘Lights Please’ happens like that.

The writing process isn’t something I’m in love with. I’m an illustrator who writes.

I don’t know that it’s particularly good for my writing process, but I have gotten some very valuable writing ideas and advice through Twitter and Facebook and other social network sites.

Writing anything as an expert is really poisonous to the writing process, because you lose the quality of discovery.

I wasn’t letting people in with the music writing process, and for a long time, I thought I was hard to work with.

I don’t really have a writing process. I don’t write at all but, honestly, I feel like it’s a modern-day writing because everything is technology and if I go in there and freestyle and I keep it, I feel like I wrote that. If I go in there and fix it, it’s almost like something I wrote.

There’s always somebody you can call and go have lunch with and just talk out an idea. And it’s great, because I need that. It’s part of my writing process, to early on sit people down and say, ‘Alright, this film I’m working on…’ and I tell them everything I have.

The writing process is the time where nothing’s been set in stone. It’s a blank slate, or a blank page.

I sometimes start keeping a journal about the writing process itself. Particularly when I get the ideas, and I am trying to brood over the chaos phase. In writing a novel, you really have to brood over a lot of chaos of ideas and possibilities.

I write wherever I am. It helps that the writing process, for me, is a lone-wolf mission.

If we were truly in the studio making a record, it would have been more time consuming, and certainly I would have been more involved in the writing process.

I’m a writer who simply can’t know what I’m writing about until the writing lets me discover it. In a sense, my writing process embraces the gapped nature of my memory process, leaping across spaces that represent all I’ve lost and establishing fresh patterns within all that remains.

I try not to think too much about my writing process – I tend to feel my way forward and find more insights that way.

All of my scripts are based on other people’s novels. Generally, I consider myself as one who writes for theatre. I do not see film work as a continuation of writing for theatre. It is more of an interruption of the writing process.

Since signing with Universal, I have been working closely with Gary Ross, the director, producer and screenwriter. We have spent many hours on the phone, and I’ve been sending him information and items that have been useful to the writing process.

Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there’s just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside.

I like the story writing process. I usually use someone who has been trained for structure to take the story that I actually want, place those elements in the right places.

Well, everything surprises me about the writing process because illustrating comes much more naturally to me than writing does.

During the writing process, I tend not to listen to too much music. I obviously wear a lot of influences on my sleeve, but if I was listening to too many records, I would turn into too much of a monkey.

I think it starts to feel really redundant when you start to do something the same way over and over again. I don’t think it’s good to become so dependent on a certain writing process.

The writing process for us is different with every song. Sometimes they come from our lives, or someone else we know may be going through something that we choose to write about.

I’m not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me.

Music helps me immeasurably in the writing process.

I enjoy talking to groups who are interested in the writing process or the industry. I never teach – because truthfully, I don’t know how it all works; it just does. Sort of magic-like. But I love to share my experiences and perspectives.

I loved the writing process. I would love to write more. And I’d like to do a roundtable, like ‘The View’ or ‘The Talk’ – something related to social issues and things that are current.

Reading the final copy of my book was like walking down memory lane all over again. Sure, the writing process was emotional, but when I had the final copy in my hands, it was a completely different feeling.

It’s writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that’s broader than just figuring out a song. You’re also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements.

My actual writing process? I have to just love the beat before I even write on it. I can’t force myself to write to a beat that I’m not immediately loving.