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

Lawrence Wray

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

Thomas Wolfe

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

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

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

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

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

Joseph Conrad

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

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

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

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

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

Stephen King

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

Matthew Arnold

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote Quote

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

Romulus Linney

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