Writers Block Quotes

“You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in...it's actually kind of tragic because you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is. And there were a couple of years where I really struggled with that.”
― David Foster Wallace

“Writer’s block is my unconscious mind telling me that something I’ve just written is either unbelievable or unimportant to me, and I solve it by going back and reinventing some part of what I’ve already written so that when I write it again, it is believable and interesting to me. Then I can go on. Writer’s block is never solved by forcing oneself to “write through it,” because you haven’t solved the problem that caused your unconscious mind to rebel against the story, so it still won’t work – for you or for the reader.”
― Orson Scott Card

“I deal with writer’s block by lowering my expectations. I think the trouble starts when you sit down to write and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent—and when you don’t, panic sets in. The solution is never to sit down and imagine that you will achieve something magical and magnificent. I write a little bit, almost every day, and if it results in two or three or (on a good day) four good paragraphs, I consider myself a lucky man. Never try to be the hare. All hail the tortoise.”
― Malcolm Gladwell

“Why do I keep evading my work? Is it because I’m afraid of being confronted by my lack of abilities?”
― Candace Bushnell, Summer and the City

“To get over artist's block, make shitty art.”
― Dave Horowitz

“What is hell to a writer? Hell is being too busy to find the time to write or being unable to find the inspiration. Hell is suddenly finding the words but being away from your notebook or typewriter. Hell is when the verses slip away through your fingers and they never return again.”
― R.M. Engelhardt, The Resurrection Waltz Poems R.M. Engelhardt

“Make a list of all the varieties of aliens you can come up with. (And if it's less than 3,000, then THE PEARS ARE LAUGHING AT YOU, MY FRIEND.)" -Scott Westerfeld from NaNoWriMo Pep Talk.”
― Scott Westerfeld

“I haven't written in a week. It's like holding your breath under water. You feel an awful constriction and then the instinct to propel yourself.”
― D.A. Botta

“Over analysis leads to paralysis”
― Rebecca Jane, The Real Lady Detective Agency

“The thing I want to write most is the next thing I write.”
― Carroll Bryant

“You don't have to take it out on my typewrite ya' know. It's not the machine's fault that you can't write. It's a sin to do that to a good machine.”
― Sam Shepard, True West

“Writing isn't difficult. Writing well is difficult. What is most difficult is being with the interior experience that manifests as resistance to writing.”
― H Raven Rose, Liquid Me: Poetry and Prose

“A writer is always writing for someone.”
― L.L. Barkat, The Novelist

“If she was going to write a novel, she felt defeated before she began, because someone might be coming along to pick it apart, looking for symbols like The Conch or The Whale, which seemed to have mythic proportions.”
― L.L. Barkat, The Novelist

“Writing is hard. That's why so few people stick to it and actually finish things. And why you have a right to be immensely proud when you finish something."

[There Is No Such Thing as Writers' Block: Blog post, October 7, 2001]”
― Andy Ihnatko

“The trouble with a baby, for writists, is that they take away your useful melancholy, even the energy to invent some.”
― D.A. Botta

“I have found repeatedly hitting my head with a mallet doesn't help at all, so i am open to suggestions.”
― Steve Merrick

“She meant you have to live a story for a time.'

'And?'

'And then you can write it, in time. What have you lived?'

'Kind of a personal question for Twitterland.'

'Kind of the perfect question to answer in fiction.”
― L.L. Barkat, The Novelist