Writing Relief Quotes

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

One of the great things about writing middle-grade books is that it's really a nice break, when you're writing super intense stuff like 'Coldtown', to be able to write something a little lighter - calm down and do something different.

Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.

Writing is a hard business...but nothing makes you feel better.

If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!

In the early days, it was, you know, I used to weep while I was writing. I used to grab at any kind of anything, any hint, any tip of how to make it easy.

A novel is 400 pages; it's an endurance race. There's no artist, so I have to describe everything. It's all prose. Whereas with comics, I can rely on the artist. It's really wonderful to have that collaboration and to not always feel the burden of describing everything myself and also just to have someone who can paint the world.

When people speak to me of the torment of writing, I can think only of what it was like before I wrote: once writing meant writing and not thinking about writing, I knew nothing of any torment.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating.

The very best moment of writing 'Swamplandia!' was when I figured out what the ending should be. And even though I changed the prose of it, that realization was an ice cube melting in my chest.

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.

I always say writing a play is like toothache: I find it incredibly painful, and it's only once the play's out that the pain is gone.

One of the reasons I wanted to write a memoir was because I'm tired of telling my story. [Laughs] So I can say, here, read it, this is everything that happened. There are a bunch of cool stories of the transition of me becoming a receiver from a quarterback in college to being a special teams guy, a role player, to working my way to the role I've earned now.

Any of us who listen to the news or listen to stories our neighbors tell are accustomed to violence. We have to decide then to ignore the violence and create a gentler world in our fiction, or to heighten the violence through the use of point-of-view in order to explore it and gain some insight and understanding. Since I'm living with the violence and trouble in my brain, it's kind of a relief to write about it, to get it on paper, to put it in context, to find meaning in it.

Novels are so much unrulier and more stressful to write. A short story can last two pages and then it's over, and that's kind of a relief. I really like balancing the two.

When I'm writing, I don't feel neurotic. So it's better for the family if I'm working.

I'm never more miserable than when I write, and never more happy than having finished and having it sitting in front of me.

It's one of the strangest attributes of this profession that when we writers get exhausted writing one thing, we relax by writing another.

Shorter work - personal essays and book reviews - allow me to take a break from working on a book, which is good for the book and for its author.

When I write, it's purging for me. It's a therapeutic process.

I no longer feel pressure to produce fiction.

The good thing about writing a novel is that you're creating an imaginary world and can take a break when you need to.

I find it very satisfying to write because you can purge many things and vent what you feel under the mask of fiction.

I'm used to writing and performing my own material; doing someone else's is refreshing.