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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023June 4, 2026 1166

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

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

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

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

Stephen King

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

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

Steven Bochco

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

Romulus Linney

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

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

Jeanette Walls

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

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

Sidney Sheldon

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

Christopher Hampton

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