Now we know why some writers drink!

23 Dec, 2023

There is a stereotype out there about writers. They're talented and frustrated and hit the bottle way too often. Maybe the reason some talented writers are frustrated and drink to excess is because of what they're asked to write. Example:

Why Writers Drink

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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023May 9, 2025

There is a stereotype out there about writers. They’re talented and frustrated and hit the bottle way too often. Maybe the reason Read More...

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

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

C. J. Cherryh

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

Jeanette Walls

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

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.

Mark Twain

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

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

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.