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

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025 776

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

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

Stan Lee

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

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

William Shawn

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

Joseph Conrad

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 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

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

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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

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

Gloria Steinem

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

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

Dan Poynter

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

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

Lawrence Wray

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

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

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