You’ve heard of writer’s block. But have you heard of reader’s block?

05 Aug, 2019

I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading...if you're not suffering from reader's block: Reader's block article

You’ve heard of writer’s block. But have you heard of reader’s block?

August 5, 2019July 21, 2023

I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading…if you’re not suffering from reader’s block: Read More...

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.