Writing Exercises Quotes

I'd like to take a course in writing. I'm not the best writer in the world. I'd like to write more neatly, even though people don't send many handwritten letters these days.

Exercise the writing muscle every day.

When I start a new novel, I often write 'test chapters' in different tenses and from different points of view in order to figure out which is best to tell the tale.

Read a ton. Take a workshop course so you learn to give and get criticism.

I'm not a writer. I haven't written anything.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.

Read the kinds of things you want to write; read the kinds of things you would never write. Learn something from every writer you read.

I like high school and college writing textbooks and find them very helpful. Whenever I'm stuck and seem to have no ideas, I open one up and turn to the back. There I'll find questions like, "Have you had any experiences with an alcoholic or a sailor?"

My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.

Read Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande. Then do what it says, including the tasks you think are impossible. You will particularly hate the advice to write first thing in the morning, but if you can manage it, it might well be the best thing you ever do for yourself. This book is about becoming a writer from the inside out. Many later advice manuals derive from it. You don't ­really need any others, though if you want to boost your confidence, "how to" books seldom do any harm. You can kick-start a whole book with some little writing exercise.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.

I loathe the trivialization of poetry that happens in creative writing classes. Teachers set exercises to stimulate subject matter: Write a poem about an imaginary landscape with real people in it. Write about a place your parents lived in before you were born. We have enough terrible poetry around without encouraging more of it.

When people ask me for secrets to writing, I say, 'Read to write.'

Doing interesting things and then writing about them is the best way to become a good writer.

I'm a great believer in the experiential theory of writing.

word thrower … phrase maker

...there was practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk exercise on a sheet of foolscap by way of restoring the circulation.

When I don't have any story in my mind, I am busy doing foundation work.

I'm a really slow writer. What I need to start writing on any given day, is a kernel, a line of dialogue, anything I can sense concretely.

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.

I keep a journal, like many writers do. It helps in writing a story, as you can use an incident from the journal and put in your story.

I take some pains to learn the material beforehand. I have a bunch of tricks I use to try and hit the ground running. I write everything out. I take the text and I very methodically go through, and that tends to put it into my head a little bit more solidly than if I just glanced at it and hoped for the best.

I don't like to use writing assignments, exercises. I think too often people get comfortable writing in that vein, but you can't go on to write a novel comprised of short writing exercises.

There's not a lot of good content to write about when you're 13 years old, so you just have to kind of fake it.

Step by step, you make your way forward. That’s why practices such as daily writing exercises or keeping a daily blog can be so helpful. You see yourself do the work, which shows you that you can do the work. Progress is reassuring and inspiring; panic and then despair set in when you find yourself getting nothing done day after day. One of the painful ironies of work life is that the anxiety of procrastination often makes people even less likely to buckle down in the future.