Writing is…

“Writing is… being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.”―Mary Gaitskill

“Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother.” ―Richard Peck

“Writing is its own reward.” ―Henry Miller

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself .” ―Franz Kafka

“Writing is a struggle against silence.” ―Carlos Fuentes

Writing is madness, obsession, release—it’s a desperate need to make sense of things.

“Writing is creative but the guts of it boils down to discipline.” ―Susan Duncan

“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.” ―David McCullough

“Writing is probably like a scientist thinking about some scientific problem or an engineer about an engineering problem.” ―Doris Lessing

“Writing is like a sport, it’s like athletics. If you don’t practice, you don’t get any better.” ―Rick Riordan

Writing is letting go of the fear that you can’t say what you need to say.

“Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.” ―Kate DiCamillo

“Writing is rewriting. Even after you’ve gotten an agent and an editor, you’ll have to rewrite. If you fall in love with the vision you want of your work and not your words, the rewriting will become easier.” ―Rick Riordan

” Writing is hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then un-hypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.” ―Anne Lamott