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:

Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023June 4, 2026

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You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

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

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

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

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

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

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

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

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

Joseph Conrad

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

Jim Morrison

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.