Writing Quotes
Writing isn't as easy as it might seem. It takes not just skill, but also great persistence and loads of patience.
Reading what other writers say can inspire you and help sustain you through all the countless rejections that are part of the writing life. I've collected the following from various sources and I hope they're as helpful to you as they've been to me.
I've been as diligent as I can with citing sources but, please, if you notice incorrect citing of sources do let me know. (Oh, the spelling oscillates between UK English and US is on purpose - it depends on the book where the quote comes from.)
NOTE: feel free to copy and paste anything from this page, but please respect the person who said or wrote the quote and cite them as the source.
"You can't wait for inspiration,
you have
to go after it with a club."
- Jack London.
"It took me better than a quarter century to learn, the hard way, that hard work at something you want to be doing is the most fun that you can have out of bed...to learn that the smart man finds ways to make everything he does be work; to learn that 'leisure' time is truly pleasurable (indeed tolerable) only to the extent that it is subconscious grazing for information with which to infuse newer, better work." - Spider Robinson.
"I love to
type. 'I'd type a laundry list and enjoy it. The keyboard is my piano." -
author anonymous.
"If you're hooked on the physical act of
writing, there's a good chance of your hanging in there long enough to say
what you were born to say." - Peter Meinke.
"There lies the horror of artists - we are too aware. It's heightened
awareness that can bring wonderful things and grief.'' - Patricia Polacco.
"The writer is one who writes...he withdraws to some quiet corner...and
applies himself to his blank paper. Two hours a day are needed; three hours
are better; four are heroic." - Gerald Warner Brace.
"If crazies were a little crazy, writers were dangerous lunatics; embittered
socially dysfunctional grudge-carriers..." - Ben Elton.
"Writing a book is an adventure: it begins as an amusement, then t becomes a
mistress, then a master, and finally a tyrant." - Winston Churchill.
"I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine
o'clock every morning." - Peter De Vries.
"Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing
at your own joke." - F. Scott Fitzgerald.
"So far as good writing goes, the use of the exclamation mark is a sign of
failure. It is the literary equivalent of a man holding up a card reading
LAUGHTER to a studio audience." - Mils Kington.
"Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until
the drops of blood form on your forehead." - Gne Fowler.
"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open
a vein." Red Smith.
"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write
faster than anybody who can write better." - A.J. Leibling.
"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows
what they are." - attributed to W. Somerset Maugham.
"Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough
drafts. It's like passing round samples of one's sputum." - Vladimir Nabokov.
All of the following quotes are
from
the book On Writing by
Stephen King
"If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose),
someone will try to make you feel lousy about it..."
"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."
"...for the first time in my life, writing was hard. The problem was
the teaching...by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I'd spent the week
with jumper cables clamped to my brain."
"Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a
lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is
usually enough."
"...stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either
emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on
when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if
feels like all you're managing is to shovel sh*t from a sitting position."
"Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation.
Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing
as "good" and other sorts as "bad" is fearful behavior.
"The more fiction you read and write, the more you'll find your
paragraphs forming on their own."
"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all
others: read a lot and write a lot."
"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the
tools) to write. Simple as that."
"If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a
member of polite society are numbered, anyway...You must be prepared to do
some serious turning inward toward the life of the imagination, and that
means, I'm afraid, that [TV] must go. Reading takes time, and the glass teat
takes too much of it."
"When you find something at which you are talented, you do it
(whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or until your eyes are ready to
fall out of your head...The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I
advocate - four to six hours a day, every day - will not seem strenuous if
you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them."
"...book-buyers aren't attracted, by and large, by the literary
merits of a novel: book-buyers want a good story...something that will first
fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages."
"...[you need] openness and inability to do anything other than get
to the point."
"...my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty
much make themselves."
"The situation comes first...the characters...come next...[then]
begin to narrate..."
"...keep the ball rolling..."
"[what you're not paid to do] is be self-indulgent."
"...your job is to say what you see and then get on with your
story."
"And if you are honest about the words coming out of your
characters' mouths, you'll find that you've let yourself in for a fair
amount of criticism."
"...writing fiction...is no job for intellectual cowards."
"The best stories [are]... character-driven...[but not a] character
study."
"...practice is invaluable... honesty is indispensable..."
"If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love
it. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch once said, 'Murder your darlings', and he was
right."
"Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a
difficult, lonely job: it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub."
"Formula: Second Draft = First Draft minus 10%..."
This was the first book read to
me by my fifth grade teacher - and thus my love affair with reading began!
This is the first book I owned. I still have it on my shelf.
This is the book that made me want to write.
My writing hero: Ben Elton. Not only has he written some marvellous books,
but he's responsible for the genius of the TV series Blackadder.
My fave series has to be the Harry Potter series. Here's author JK Rowling
with one of her books.
And of course I must include JRR Tolkien, writer of the legendary Lord Of
The Rings trilogy, as writing royalty.