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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023June 4, 2026 1368

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

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

Raymond Chandler

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

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

Dan Poynter

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

Stephen King

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

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

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

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Lawrence Wray

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

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

Jeanette Walls

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

Thomas Jefferson

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.

Robert McKee

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

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

William Shawn

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

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