In Their Own Words: Authors Give Thanks (Or Not) with Some Inspiring Writing Quotes.

This Thanksgiving, we’re offering some inspiring writing quotes from some of our favorite authors. (Plus some anonymous funnies.) 

by Ruth Harris

Editing, revising and rewriting—

“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” — Oscar Wilde

“I handed in a script last year and the studio didn’t change one word. The word they didn’t change was on page 87.” — Steve Martin

“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

“I work very hard on the writing, writing and rewriting and trying to weed out the lumber.” — David McCullough

“Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out is the secret of all good writing.” — Mark Haddon

Inspiration—

“Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That’s what I look for.” — Aaron Sorkin

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ― Jack London

“Creativity flourishes in small structured spaces.” — Eve Barbeau (in a comment on this blog.)

“Inspiration comes from so many sources. Music, other fiction, the non-fiction I read, TV shows, films, news reports, people I know, stories I hear, misheard words or lyrics, dreams. Motivation? The memory of the rush I get from a really good writing session—even on a bad day, I know I’ll find that again if I keep going.” — Trudi Canavan

“Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.” — Harold Pinter

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” Stephen King

“When I was writing Kitchen Confidential, I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.” — Anthony Bourdain

Writing routines (or lack thereof)—

“I don’t have much of a routine. I go through periods where I work a great deal at all hours of the day whenever I am around a typewriter, and then I go through spells where I don’t do anything. I just sort of have lunch—all day. I never have been able to stick to a schedule. I work when there is something due or when I am really excited about a piece.” — Nora Ephron

“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

“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

“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.” — Robert A. Heinlein

“If I don’t feel like writing on a certain day, I just go to the cafe and hang around.” — Elizabeth Berg

Shit, crap and housework—

“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

“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” — Agatha Christie

“Writing advice is bull****, but sometimes bull**** fertilizes” — Chuck Wendig

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.“ — Anne Lamott

“All first drafts are shit.” — Ernest Hemingway

The road to hell—

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”— Stephen King

“The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.” — Philip Roth

Sales and pay checks—

“The first page sells this book. The last page sells your next book.”— Mickey Spillane

“The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.” — Robert Benchley

Natural talent—

“Some critics will write ‘Maya Angelou is a natural writer’—which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.” — Maya Angelou

“I was too heavy to be a jockey and too honest to be a producer, so I became a writer.” — Leon Uris

“Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.” — Ann Patchett

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The first four months of writing the book, my mental image is scratching with my hands through granite. My other image is pushing a train up the mountain, and it’s icy, and I’m in bare feet.” — Mary Higgins Clark

Rules for Writers—

“There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.” — Doris Lessing

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” — Virginia Woolf

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — Somerset Maugham

“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

Writer wannabes—

“I get a lot of letters from people. They say: ‘I want to be a writer. What should I do?’ I tell them to stop writing to me and get on with it.”— Ruth Rendell

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” — Dorothy Parker

“First of all, whatever you do, work in a field that has something to do with writing or publishing. So you will be exposed to what people are writing about and how they are writing, and as important, so you will be exposed to people in the business who will get to know you and will call on you if they are looking for someone for a job.. Secondly, you have to write. And if you don’t have a job doing it, then you have to sit at home doing it.” — Nora Ephron

“Finish the things you start to write. Do it a lot and you will be a writer. The only way to do it is to do it.” — Neil Gaiman

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer. When asked to define great, he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!” He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

“When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.” —Isaac Bashevis Singer

Writing and the afterlife—

“Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment thereafter.”— Jessamyn West

A writer died and was given the option of going to heaven or hell. She decided to check out each place first. As the writer descended into the fiery pits, she saw row upon row of writers chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they were repeatedly whipped with thorny lashes.

“Oh my,” said the writer. “Let me see heaven now.”

A few moments later, as she ascended into heaven, she saw rows of writers, chained to their desks in a steaming sweatshop. As they worked, they, too, were whipped with thorny lashes.

“Wait a minute,” said the writer. “This is just as bad as hell!”

“Oh no, it’s not,” replied an unseen voice. “Here, your work gets published.”

Reviews and reviewers—

“A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn’t allow it to spoil your lunch.”— Kingsley Amis

“Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.” — John Steinbeck

“Don’t read reviewers or reviews for any reason, good or bad. Avoid those at all costs. They can become mind worms. In other words, believe in your own writing and keep learning and having fun.” — Dean Wesley Smith

“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.” — Christopher Hampton

“The only time I’ll get good reviews is if I kill myself.”  — Edward Albee

Character, plot and storytelling—

“I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.” — Tom Clancy

“Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” — Ray Bradbury

“I like books in which things happen.” — Hilary Mantel

“For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.” — Celeste Ng

“Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.” — Elizabeth George

“I always try to tell a good story, one with a compelling plot that will keep the pages turning. That is my first and primary goal. Sometimes I can tackle an issue-homelessness, tobacco litigation, insurance fraud, the death penalty-and wrap a good story around it.” — John Grisham

“The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.” — E. M. Forster

Writing to market—

“Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.” — Margaret Atwood

“Write for yourself, and then worry about the audience.” — Stephen King

“Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you’ll mostly fall flat on your face, because it’s impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That’s how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It’s hard work.” — Wilbur Smith

“If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.” — Anne Frank

Sex, libraries and the G spot—

“A library is a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.” — Germaine Greer

“For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.” — Isabel Allende

Agents and publishers—

“If Moses were alive today he’d come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments and spend the next five years trying to get them published.” — Anonymous

A writer comes home to a burned down house. His/her sobbing and slightly-singed Significant Other is standing outside. “What happened, honey?” the writer asks.

“Oh, John, it was terrible,” he/she weeps. “I was cooking, the phone rang. It was your agent. Because I was on the phone, I didn’t notice the stove was on fire. It went up in second. Everything is gone. I nearly didn’t make it out of the house. Poor Fluffy is–”

“Wait! Wait! Back up a minute,” the writer says. “My agent called?”

Compiled by Ruth Harris @RuthHarrisBooks November 25, 2018

What about you, scriveners? Do you have a favorite writing quote?

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OPPORTUNITY ALERTS

WOW! WOMEN ON WRITING FALL FLASH FICTION CONTEST $10 ENTRY FEE; CRITIQUE OPTION FOR AN ADDITIONAL $10. Deadline November 30, 2018. The honorable guest judge this season is Literary Agent Heather Flaherty with The Bent Agency. Short fiction of any genre: 250 – 750 words. Reprints and multiple submissions okay. Limit: 300 entries. First Place: $400, publication, interview, and $25 Amazon Gift Certificate. Many great 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th place prizes. Top 10 stories to be published in Women On Writing ezine. Deadline November 30.

SERVICESCAPE SHORT STORY AWARD NO ENTRY FEE. They’re looking for any genre of short fiction. Maximum 5,000 words. Prize is $1000 in addition to publication in SERVICESCAPE. Deadline November 30.

Columbia College Literary Review Editors’ Prize contest. FREE! They’re looking for creative nonfiction or fiction. Up to 5000 words. Prize: $100 and publication in the 2018 edition of CCLR. Deadline December 1.

Bad Dream Horror/Humor Anthology.  They’re looking for original horror fiction with a strong sense of comedy. They discourage old tropes like vampires, zombies & werewolves. 1500-8000 words. Pays 6c a word plus royalties. Deadline Dec. 31^st.

DISQUIET LITERARY PRIZES $15 ENTRY FEE.  Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction categories. Up to 25 pages for prose 10 pages for poetry. The top  fiction winner will be published on Granta.com, the nonfiction winner in Ninthletter.com, and the poetry winner in The Common. Grand prize winner will receive a full scholarship including tuition, lodging, and a $1,000 travel stipend to Lisbon in 2019. Runners-up and other outstanding entrants will receive financial aid. Deadline January 10, 2019.

Don’t let those published short stories stop working! Here are 25 Literary Magazines that will take reprints.