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 the countless rejections that are part of the writing life. I've collected the following quotes 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 if you notice incorrect citing of sources do let me know. (Oh, and the spelling oscillates between UK English and US on purpose depending 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.
"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." - Miles 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." - Gene 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 [referring to the plot] 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%..."
C.S. Lewis's
The Lion, The Witch And The
Wardrobe was the first book read to
me by my fifth grade teacher - and thus my love affair with reading began!
Sadako And The Thousand Paper Cranes by
Eleanor Coerr was the first book I owned. I still have it on my shelf.
The Outsiders
by
S.E. Hinton 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
J.K. Rowling
with one of her books.
And of course I must include
J.R.R. Tolkien, writer of the legendary
Lord Of
The Rings trilogy, as creative royalty.