Writing is hard work. Take it from those who practice the craft. Here are 20 quotes about writing by writers. Related: Invest in your creative writing future, or gift the writer in your life, with these best online creative writing classes taught by bestselling authors and writers.
1.
“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”―Joseph Heller
2.
“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”―Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
3.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”―Maya Angelou
via wordsnquotes.com
4.
“Write hard and clear about what hurts. ”―Ernest Hemingway
via ryanharp.net
5.
“Write freely and as rapidly as possible, and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.”―John Steinbeck
6.
“I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.”―Anne Morrow Lindbergh
7.
“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”―Stephen King
8.
“A good story should make you laugh, and a moment later break your heart.”―Chuck Palahniuk
9.
“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.”―Mark Twain
10.
“The writing process is like moving. On the first day of the move you’re just trying to get all your stuff into the new house. That’s your first draft – just trying to get all your ideas on paper. You look at the thing when you’re done and it’s a mess, but the basics are there and you have something solid to work with. First drafts always feel like open wounds to me. The next day of the move you wake up and your furniture and clothes and everything else are all over the place, but now you can ask yourself: Where am I going to put all this stuff? What looks right where? Is my Feng Shui screwed up? What should stay and what should go? Thinking about writing and editing this way helps me stay clear about what I’m trying to do at each stage of the process.”―Chuck Crabbe
11.
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”―Sylvia Plath
12.
“The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”―Anaïs Nin
13.
“No black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much’. Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’…No woman has ever written enough.”―Bell Hooks
14.
“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”―Margaret Atwood
15.
“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything good.”―William Faulkner
via observando.net
16.
“I’m a great admirer of my own writing.”―Snoopy
17.
“You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.”―Nancy Kress
18.
“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”―Nathaniel Hawthorne
19.
“Write what should not be forgotten.”―Isabel Allende
20.
“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.”―Agatha Christie
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