Writing Reflection Quotes

Let's start at the very end: The postscript of Stephen King's 'On Writing' contains some of the most harrowing pages he has ever written. It's here that King describes the traffic accident that nearly killed him in June 1999.

I have kept a reading diary since I was 18. I am jealous of my friend who has kept hers since she was ten.

I did not think that I was angry, but clearly anger was reflected in my writing. I did not think that I had been affected emotionally, but it was clear from my writing that I was still very emotional about the trial some six months after it ended.

I actually started trying to be a professional writer with novels, and I wrote two that exist and are around... kind of. But they never really went anyplace in particular. I still like them both. What it showed me was that you can spend years on a novel, and then it could just be, like, OK, you spent that time and that's that.

You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it.

I am never as clear about any matter as when I have finished writing about it.

When you're writing a story in bits and pieces, month in and month out, there really isn't time or space for reflection, no room to learn what those scripts had to teach you.

Writing is a solitary profession; you are really alone when you write. Then the emotions become well shaped and distinct. But their transition into words must be done deliberately and with rigid artistry.

During the holiday season, it's easy to forget that sometimes the best gift of all is simply the gift of time. I can't think of anything a writer would appreciate more than being given time and space to work.

I have to say, 'Pod' was a bon-bon, a treat to myself. A treat to write: a happy, pleasurable write.

A lot of the time writers are just sponges... for what's around them, and so books are helpful for focusing your mind and literally putting it into words.

My writing routine is: get son off to school and sit down at 8 A.M. I read what I wrote the day before, and then write longhand, into a notebook. I prefer paper and pen because it feels closer to my brain.

When you've written long enough, you see that there's a common theme in your work.

Writing is the thing that pervades my whole day - I'm always wondering how I might describe something or improve my understanding. I'm constantly trying to remember an eavesdropped conversation or an idea for a story.

When I start getting close to the end of a novel, something registers in the back of my mind for the next novel, so that I usually don't write, or take notes. And I certainly don't begin. I just allow things to percolate for a while.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I guess I feel it's funny to be looked to for advice on writing when I am still taking in so much from other people.

When I write, I normally write anywhere that I can feel at peace, so if it's in my bedroom, if it's at the park, if it's by a lake somewhere, wherever I feel calm is where I like to write.

The books one has written in the past have two surprises in store: one couldn't write them again, and wouldn't want to.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

I think, one day, I might actually try writing a bunch of - a collection of essays maybe on the funnier side of the spectrum. I don't know. But it's fun to have, frankly, Twitter as kind of an outlet. When you're writing about dark things all day, it's kind of fun to have fun.

Of everything with 'The Room' that came out of it, I feel like being able to write, and tap back into that passion, was something I'm really thankful for.

There is a tendency for writers to be most exciting by whatever they just wrote. Sometimes that excitement is warranted. Sometimes on further listen it's not as good as something they did a couple of years ago, but it's just not in their sights at that particular time.

Most everything that happens to me in any significant sense finds its way into my fiction.

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.