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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023May 9, 2025 742

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

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

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

Jim Morrison

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

Michael Burke

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

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

Jeanette Walls

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

T.S. Eliot

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

Dan Poynter

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

William Shawn

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

Sidney Sheldon

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

Gloria Steinem

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

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

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

Lisa See

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

Mickey Spillane

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

M. K. Simmons

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

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