Writing Quotes - Page 841

Shut up and write. Don't talk about writing, just physically do it.

I consider writing a legitimate Zen practice.

Understand that writing is like an athletic activity. To play tennis well, you expect to keep practicing, but for some reason with writing, you think you should come out fresh the first time.

You don't need to go to a therapist, you don't need to do all kinds of things. If you want to write, you physically have to do it.

Shut up and write anyway. Don't use anything as an excuse.

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

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

When you are not writing, you are a writer too. It doesn't leave you.

When we write we begin to taste the texture of our own mind

Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.

Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it

I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.

Finally, if you want to write, you have to just shut up, pick up a pen, and do it. I'm sorry there are no true excuses. This is our life. Step forward. Maybe it's only for ten minutes. That's okay. To write feels better than all the excuses.

Kill the idea of the lone, suffering artist. Don't make it any harder on yourself.

Ultimately, writing is about trusting your own mind. It is an act of discovery.

In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not staying in the heat of your own emotions. You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.

It’s much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms.

We are searching for the core of our lives; our culture intuits that writing, that ancient activity, might be the pathway...Awakening does not feed ego's needs and desires; it pulverizes the self. Our society couldn't knowingly bear such reduction, so we've tricked ourselves into the same path but call it writing.

I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time at my real work.

This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

I hear people say they're going to write. I ask, when? They give me vague statements. Indefinite plans get dubious results. When we're concrete about our writing time, it alleviates that thin constant feeling of anxiety that writers have - we're barbecuing hot dogs, riding a bike, sailing out in the bay, shopping for shoes, even helping a sick friend, but somewhere nervously at the periphery of our perception we know we belong somewhere else - at our desk!

[T]he one thing I want for you is to recognize when you are really singing in writing practice and honor that. Trust that. When you were screaming on the page. Maybe that doesn't make a whole book but that is the true seed.

In a way, the cancer became an ally because it stopped me from running around so much. I was able to settle down and write things I hadn't had a chance to before.

I don't mean to be flippant about cancer - it was hard, it was tough and it was scary. Then my next manuscript was about cancer because I had a whole new topic to write about. And because I wrote, it didn't take over. Writing took the chaos out of cancer.

In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.