Writers' Journey Quotes

...when the words pour out of you just right, you understand that these sentences are all part of a river flowing out of your own distant, hidden ranges, and all words become the dissolving snow that feeds your mountain streams forever. The language locks itself in the icy slopes of our own high passes, and it is up to us, the writers, to melt the glaciers within us. When these glaciers break off, we get to call them novels, the changelings of our burning spirits, our life's work.

I think the path for a young writer might be one that says, "I have to accept myself, this is what I am. I can't eradicate my defects. I can work on them."

You write one book and you're ready for fame and fortune. I don't know that people are spending the time and attention on learning how to write-which takes years. Everybody sees the success stories.

As a child, I amused myself by making up stories. I'd lie in bed when I was supposed to be sleeping and imagine other lands where people were doing fascinating things. By fifth grade, I knew I wanted to be a writer, but it took several more decades to really find my way as an author.

Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go control, when the work takes off on its own and flies, farther than they ever planned or imagined, to places they didn't know they knew.

Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.

Most writers are trying to find what they think or feel. . . not simply working from the given, but toward the given, saying the unsayable and steadily asking, "What do I really feel about this?

Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one.

Probably I, like a lot of people, became a writer in imitation of or in homage to the books I enjoyed. When you're so captivated by something, you think, could I do that? Hmm, let me try.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.

Really, I prefer not to read my early books. Not that I don't like them, but I don't recognize myself anymore, like an old actor watching himself as a young leading man.

I like to focus on stories that need to be told and are not told enough. When I get bit by that bug, and the story is saying, 'You must tell me,' I then go through a process which is often painful and arduous, and long - and joyful! - of submitting to the story until I prove a worthy enough vessel to get it out.

As writers, we have to make our own work - as bloggers, writing for video games, whatever we can do. Everyone breaks into the business in a different way.

As writers, we are exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence.