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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023May 9, 2025 385

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

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It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

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

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

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 don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

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

Stephen King

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

William Shawn

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

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

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

Jeanette Walls

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

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

Sidney Sheldon

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

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

Edward Albee

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.