Writer 27s Block Quotes

If you do enough planning before you start to write, there's no way you can have writer's block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline. ~ R.L. Stine

Cure for writer's block: blow something up(in the story) ~ Scott Westerfeld

ARGH! There's no such thing [as writer's block]. Seriously: THERE. IS. NO. SUCH. THING. You know what there is? There's a bunch of problems, creative and otherwise, that can stop you writing. They are not block. They are important skills. ~ Nick Harkaway

I don't think that writer's block exists really. I think that when you're trying to do something prematurely, it just won't come. Certain subjects just need time, as I've learned over and over again. You've got to wait before you write about them. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. ~ Paul Rudnick

My block was due to two overlapping factors: laziness and lack of discipline. ~ Mary Garden

Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick. ~ Joni Mitchell

If you know how to freestyle, you will never have writer's block. ~ Will.i.am

I think living in Israel and wanting to change reality is the best prescription for never-ending writer's block. ~ Etgar Keret

I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens! ~ Loudon Wainwright III

Art is not in some far-off place. ~ Lydia Davis

I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of "writer's block". I was more inclined to think of it as "writer's impatience", and to follow Arthur Koestler's dictum: "Soak; and wait. ~ Alan Garner

Writer's block is a myth. I never see the gardeners suffering from gardening block. ~ Emo Philips

I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. ("Advance Notice") ~ Richard Matheson

I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression. ~ Saul Williams

I work on multiple projects at a time because it keeps me from getting writer's block. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I never have [suffered writer's block], although I've had books that didn't work out. I had to stop writing them. I just abandoned them. It was depressing, but it wasn't the end of the world. When it really isn't working, and you've been bashing yourself against the wall, it's kind of a relief. I mean, sometimes you bash yourself against the wall and you get through it. But sometimes the wall is just a wall. There's nothing to be done but go somewhere else. ~ Margaret Atwood

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.
That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. ~ Octavia E. Butler

If your wife locks you out of the house, you don't have a problem with your door. ~ Anne Lamott

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block. ~ Jeffery Deaver

If I waited for perfection ... I would never write a word. ~ Margaret Atwood

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers. ~ Ray Bradbury

Meggie Folchart: Having writer's block? Maybe I can help. Fenoglio: Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you? Meggie Folchart: You say that as if it's a bad thing. Fenoglio: Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the world you actually live in. ~ Cornelia Funke

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? ~ Kurt Vonnegut

There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity. ~ Natalie Goldberg

My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer's block, as if it was some kind of illness. ~ Mary Garden

My prescription for writer's block is to face the fact that there is no such thing ... Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It's a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about. ~ Thomas Mallon

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. ~ Walter Benjamin

If surgeons don't get surgeon's block, then why are you allowed to get writer's block? ~ Cory Doctorow

Writing on a computer feels like a recipe for writer's block. I can type so fast that I run out of thoughts, and then I sit there and look at the words on the screen, and move them around, and never get anywhere. Whereas in a notebook I just keep plodding along, slowly, accumulating sentences, sometimes even surprising myself. ~ Chad Harbach

I might have missed my calling as an editor. In the spring, the sight of my empty garden beds gives me the horticultural equivalent of writers' block: So much space! So many plants to choose among, and yet none of them seem quite right! ~ Susan Orlean

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

The trick to writer's block is to sack up and write through it, you see. ~ Jeph Jacques

The first draft is for YOU, the writer; the second and subsequent drafts are for the reader. Trying to do both things at once - figuring out what we want to say, while also fashioning it for another human being to read - is the cause of writer's block. ~ Karen Karbo

Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, a good mother, good-looking, good-tempered, well-dressed, well-groomed, and unaggressive. ~ Marya Mannes

My freshman English professor at Kent State University in 1984 told me I was a good writer, and she loved all the silly pictures I drew in my notebook. She said I should try writing children's books, and so I did. ~ Dav Pilkey

When people ask me what qualifies me to be a writer for children, I say I was once a child. But I was not only a child, I was, better still, a weird little kid, and though I would never choose to give my own children this particular preparation for life, there are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid. ~ Katherine Paterson

Come on fathers, don't hesitate, send them off before it's too late. Be the first one on the block to have your boy come home in a box. ~ Country Joe McDonald

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books. ~ Arthur Ransome

A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms. ~ Patricia Lee Gauch

Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both. ~ E.B. White

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. ~ E.B. White

I'm a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events. ~ Sara Sheridan

I'm not an academic; I'm not an archaeologist. I'm a writer, communicating ideas to the public. There is a model of how the past is, and a lot of academic archaeology is about refining the model. It's not about changing the model radically. I'm not aware of any current which is about radically changing the model. It's just me, really. ~ Graham Hancock

I am ... persuaded that Woolf was right, that every novel has a characteristic rhythm. And that if the writer hasn't listened for that rhythm and followed it, the sentences will be lame, the characters will be puppets, the story will be false. And if the writer can hold to that rhythm, the book will have some beauty. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

He had decided before the accident not to chase them anymore, but the circumstances of the accident made him fear for Lilia's safety. he would never bring her in, not anymore; all he wanted now was to watch over her. Michaela had been reading his notes for years, but his notes were only part of it: the other part was the way he woke up at night in his bed in Montreal and knew where Lilia was, the way he could glance at a map of the United Staes and realize with absolute, inexplicable certainty that she was in West Virginia, the way he tried to ignore his terrifying clairvoyance and forget where she was and couldn't, the way he knew where she was but had to keep driving south to check, the horror of always being right: he saw her face in the crowd on Sunset Boulevard, he stepped into a hardware store in St. Louis at the moment she stepped out of the deli across the street, he stood on a corner in a run-down neighborhood in Chicago and watched her emerge from an apartment building down the block. After each sighting he returned north more depleted, more frightened, less intact. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?"
You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind
a scene, a locale, a character, whatever
and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. ~ Anne Lamott

Serial novels have an unexpected effect; they hook the writer as well as the reader. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

See, I'm not the type of writer that has 400 songs in a suitcase someplace on the shelf. I'm sort of a rise-to-the-occasion-type of writer, so when I know I'm going to record, I get in the mood to write. ~ Luther Vandross

Great imaginations are the breeding ground for great accomplishments!
Great imaginations are like horses, they need guidance and proper nurturing, only then do they offer the world of adventure they promise. ~ Marilynn Dawson

I would rather receive a Pap smear from Captain Hook than venture out in New Year's Eve. ~ Jen Lancaster

I'm working on a number of different things. I'm working on a couple of TV things and I'm working on a couple of film things too, and they're all very early stages. One of them I'm writing myself, one of them I'm writing with somebody else, and one of them I'm supervising a writer, and they're all sort of coming up at the same time and it'll be interesting to see which one kind of reveals itself first and jumps ahead. ~ Neil Burger

I'm a writer. I'm not an actress. ~ Tatiana De Rosnay

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts. ~ Washington Irving

One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books. ~ Meg Rosoff

A next-generation innovation writer and thought leader worth watching. ~ Scott D. Anthony

Your trial is temporary, but God's Love is permanent. ~ Bo Sanchez

I did not intend to be a writer. I first wanted to be a lawyer, like my father. Then I got bit by the bug of philosophy and wanted to be a philosophy professor. I went to graduate school and quickly discovered it was impossible for a woman in those days - this was the early fifties - to be a philosopher, so I gave that up. ~ Alix Kates Shulman

There are eight million stories in the naked city," he intoned. "You remember that program? Used to be on television some years back."
"I remember."
"They had that line at the end of every show. 'There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.' "
"I remember it."
"Eight million stories," he said. "You know what you got in this city, this fucked-up toilet of a naked fucking city? You know what you got? You got eight million ways to die. ~ Lawrence Block

Acceptance spells death to a writer. ~ Arundhati Roy

During my life, I've just wondered why I have to learn from school, not from society. And now, the answer is : the decrepit education. ~ Anymous Writer

Unless you turn out to be a shining and ballistic genius, then, trust me, if you want to do this then you're going to be spending the next few years doing little else. This is a thing you do at a table with a notebook and a keyboard, and there's no getting away from it. Put in the hours. You don't get to turn off 'being a writer.' ~ Warren Ellis

Plots are ... what the writer sees with. ~ Eudora Welty

Nine times out of ten, I'm trying to meet someone else's expectations, whether it's the director or the writer or the animator, when I go back in to re-record a line. I'm the icing on the cake, but the cake is the thing. I'm really just a hood ornament on a very solid vehicle. ~ Adrian Pasdar

I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he starts writing it and asking himself if it is all right as a story. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, 'This is a pretty weak plot as it stands, but I'm such a hell of a writer that my magic touch will make it okay,' you're sunk. If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Buying, borrowing, or stealing the book is the easy part. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

So I think that in the beginning of your career you're just looking to work. Luckily for me, my first movie was 'Rabbit Hole' and I got to work with incredible people, a Pulitzer prize winning writer, John Cameron Mitchell, and all the actors involved. So it's tough, man, because you want to have credibility. ~ Miles Teller

Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like. ~ A.S. Byatt