Writing Momentum Quotes

Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.

I thought I could never write a proper book; I'd never done it before. But I thought I could write a sequence. Then I had a chapter. The next thing I knew I was turning acting down.

Fluency can be a sign that nothing is happening; fluency can actually be my signal to stop, while being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.

The point always is to be writing something - it leads to more writing.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

I finally get to the place where the book has matured in my mind and I can hardly wait to start writing it. Then I just sit down and I start. I hit the go button. I have an outline, which is 70 pages, but I don't look at it. I never have to look at it.

I try to keep a steady pace with my writing. I have found that super-productive days are usually followed by two and even three days when I can hardly write a word. I used to try for 1000 words a day; now I am high-fiving myself after 500.

When I'm writing, I write every day. It's lovely when that's happening. One day dovetailing into the next. Sometimes I don't even know what day of the week it is.

Once I start writing about something, it goes off rather fast, and sometimes details which might be interesting such as what the room looked like or what somebody said that was not exactly on the same subject tend to get lost.

A typewriter forces you to keep going, to march forward.

I like to always stop with a couple of pages that I haven't - that are just raw copy, where I haven't touched it, I haven't tried to revise it, I haven't tried to polish it. It's like having a little bit of a runway. The next day when you sit down, you have the comfort of saying, well, I have got a little bit here, used to be in the typewriter. Now it's in the magic box, the computer.

I work every day until I do not have more to say. I learned from Graham Greene that a very good way is to stop work in the middle of a sentence. Then you know exactly how to continue the day after.

I write quickly with a sense of urgency. I don't edit myself out of existence, meaning I'll try to write 50 or 60 pages before I start rereading, revising and editing. That just helps with my confidence.

I was in such a creative groove after turning in my last book (The Andy Cohen Diaries: A Deep Look at a Shallow Year) that I decided to keep writing in the hope that I'd one day do a sequel.

When people say "How do you write a book, how does it all happen?" I say, you line things up, and you line them up as actually as you possibly can, but sooner or later the book has got momentum and it's moving along under that momentum. It's like a sculpture, if you're working with the grain of the wood, the wood will start defining what shape it's going to become.

Do not wait for a poem; a poem is too fast for you. Do not wait for the poem; run with the poem and then write the poem.

One of my favorite rules of writing: stop whenever it's feeling really good so you have something to look forward to the next day.

I'm the kind of writer that, once I get into writing mode in my brain, I'm non-stop.

I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there's something more to say.

Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

Stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving a rough edge for you to start from the nest day - that way, you can write three or five words without being “creative” and before you know it, you're writing.

It's essential to have sacred time for writing. All successful authors have some daily commitment to keep on-track and moving forward.

I write in a rush of memory.

Spend more time working before you write page one. Then, the story - at least parts of it - will feel as though it is writing itself.

There is a prevailing school of thought that something good must take time, sometimes years to create and hone. I have always felt that the books I have written fastest have been my best - because I caught an unstoppable momentum in the writing.