There is only one way to overcome the difficulty of writing, and that is to write. Thought only becomes effective and productive at the time of writing.

~ Amélie Nothomb

Amélie Nothomb Writers On Writing Writing

You don't have to take it out on my typewrite ya' know. It's not the machine's fault that you can't write. It's a sin to do that to a good machine.

~ Sam Shepard

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Growing up, I used to climb out my window onto the roof and look up at the stars. There, in the quiet, I would write stories inside my head.

~ Christy Hall

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Some of the best characters are the most flawed characters.

~ Brian A. Mcbride

Brian A. Mcbride Writers On Writing Writing Writing Inspiration

Souls are more important than stories, yes. But stories are a window to the soul. Without stories, the soul suffocates.

~ Christy Hall

Christy Hall Inspirational Souls Writers On Writing Writers Quotes Writing

My mother, who is a pianist and a fine artist, purchased a piano for me. Twice. This was back when I was a small girl. Pianos, of course, came complete with the quintessential piano teacher who whacked my hand with a stick each time I struck the wrong key. I learned a few pieces, yes, but eventually my pen compelled me to write too much and the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind compelled me to climb trees too often. Sorry mom. Coincidentally, books come from trees and flipping the pages sounds like wind through leaves... hhhmmmm... I guess I’m still just climbing trees now, but in a different way!

~ C. Joybell C.

C. Joybell C. Being A Writer Being An Author Books Climbing Trees Making Books Wind In The Leaves Writers On Writing Writing Writing Books

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I'm a grown up, they call me a writer.

~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer Writers On Writing Writing

You say you're a writer but you're depressed. Not an excuse, write from there. Write some depressing sh*t. Believe me. You will have plenty of readers who can relate. Remember writers write.

~ Stanley Christopher

Stanley Christopher Writers On Writing Writers Quotes Writing

Show me the contract.

~ Buffy Andrews

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Maybe I write because I’ve learned to show certain parts of my heart on the page that I still struggle to capture in speech.

~ Common

Common Hip Hop Struggle Vulnerability Writers On Writing Writing

Writing is easy. Writing is hard. It's a breeze and a struggle, just like life.

~ Dennis R. Miller

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Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.

~ Deana J. Driver

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The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.

~ John Hughes

John Hughes Writers On Writing Writing

You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

~ G.k. Chesterton

G.k. Chesterton Writers On Writing Writing

A writer's work is never done, unless he or she has no readers.

~ K. Sean Harris

K. Sean Harris Writers On Writing Writing

Writers are like actors too. For every story we create, we must get under the skin of the characters and role play with our writing.

~ Jyoti Arora

Jyoti Arora Writers On Writing Writing

What do you feel like you SHOULD be doing instead of writing? IF you have an answer, then you have guilt. The should of life are always linked to guilt.

~ Andi Cumbo-Floyd

Andi Cumbo-Floyd Guilt Should Writing

I will break your heart over a fucking library card.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

Patrick Rothfuss Drama Meta Tension Writing

Artists strive for perfection. But what they often fail to see is that the beauty, the humanity, lies within the flaws.

~ Elizabeth Isaacs

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The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.

~ Sara Sheridan

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We know that those things to which we have an emotional connection stick with us better than those for which we have none. Dramatization is a way to get your intellectual ideas across to your audience emotionally.

~ Brian Mcdonald

Brian Mcdonald Drama Writing

I see an actress smoking a cigarette in an old Fred McMurray movie. She’s clever and beautiful and manipulative. I feel envy. I suddenly wish I smoked cigarettes and was as clever and beautiful and manipulative as she. I want to be that way at the restaurants I visit, as I’m walking to my car, with certain friends who might understand. The actress has played her part well; she’s made me want to emulate her base desires if only for a while. Does that make me impressionable, a fool, or someone who will recognize the deepest secrets of her heart?I fight hard to stay young—to keep the lines from further etching my face and hands and breasts, presumably to trick the world into believing I am young. I’m an actress playing a part. I’m afraid to tell the truth. I fear losing those younger or becoming those older. In the presence of youth, a sort of unseen age-osmosis occurs within me. The years drop away and I don’t want to leave. It’s utterly selfish but I don’t care. After all, I’m no older than they—I’ve just been so longer. I was nineteen only yesterday and they don’t retire nineteen-year-old actresses.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Acting Aging Beauty Cognitive Dissonance Rats Writing

Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I'm considering is an enormous help.

~ Sara Sheridan

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I enjoy writing historical fiction because it allows me to live more lives than just this one.

~ Karen A. Chase

Karen A. Chase Author Quotes Historical Fiction Writing Writing Philosophy

History tells us what people do, historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt.

~ Guy Vanderhaeghe

Guy Vanderhaeghe Historical Fiction History Writing

Why write about the past? Well, there's more of it.

~ John Cleese

John Cleese Funny Historical Fiction History Writing

Once again discovered: Do what you do because you enjoy. If expect others to give credit or honor your work, you are due for disappointment

~ Phillip Gary Smith

Phillip Gary Smith Credit Disappointment Discovery Do Enjoyment Honor Joy Others Why Work Writing

I have a huge and savage conscience that won't let me get away with things.

~ Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler Conscience Honor Writing

That’s why it’s difficult to write about your own life. Any distortion feels like a betrayal.

~ Paul Park

Paul Park Betrayal Own Life Writing

Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital.

~ Sara Sheridan

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Writing is 90% struggle. The other 10% is up to you.

~ Iain Cameron Williams

Iain Cameron Williams Struggle Writing

How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended.

~ René Char

René Char Bird Firebrand Heart Struggle The Library Is On Fire Writing

If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in such a condescending, casual tone, but he is a 'writer', and a talentless medio

~ Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov Criticism Humor Writing

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

~ Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates Criticism Critics Writing

The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoilism - a kind of pelting of pretentious literature with dung, lest the writers get above themselves; it is to the novelist what the gown of humiliation was to the Roman politician - a salutary ordeal. Less grandly, bad reviews are fun, so long as you are not the author. There is, it must be admitted, a kind of furtive blood sport pleasure in seeing a novelist suffer. You read on. Whereas most of us stop reading at the first use of the word 'splendid' or 'marvellous' in a review.

~ John Sutherland

John Sutherland Authors Critical Culture Criticism Humiliation Negative Reviews Reviewers Reviews Writing

For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.

~ John Sutherland

John Sutherland Authors Critic Criticism Literary Criticism Reviews Writing

Will you read this? I think maybe it sucks. Or maybe it's awesome. It's probably awesome. Tell me it's awesome, okay? Unless it sucks. — Nick

~ Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell Criticism Humor Writing

I purposely used a pretty cocky, abrasive writing style in Sex and Crime, to stir up some drama. My confrontational style quickly became the talk of the scene. Some of the things I wrote were so inflammatory, people had to vent about it on online forums. So suddenly everyone in the scene was talking about Sex and Crime, just as I had hoped. I enjoyed playing the role of agitator, and people from competing hacking crews didn't even realize that the more they bitched about the things I wrote, the more credibility and notoriety they were adding to my scene mag. Thanks to all the positive as well as negative feedback I was getting, the things I wrote actually mattered. Suddenly I was the most important opinion maker in the scene.

~ Oliver Markus

Oliver Markus Criticism Feedback Haters Gonna Hate Marketing Promotion Writing

Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise.

~ Truman Capote

Truman Capote Criticism Writing

Remember, we all make our work available in a commercial transaction, the terms of which we, ourselves, dictate. If we give it away for free, that’s our decision, and there is no refuge in the lame defense, “what do you want for nothing?” The buyer does not waive his right to express his opi

~ Pete Morin

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