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

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025 981

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

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

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

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

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

Thomas Wolfe

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

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

Stephen King

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

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

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

Stan Lee

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

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

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

Michael Burke

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

G.K. Chesterton

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

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

Joseph Conrad

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

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.