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

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

August 5, 2019July 21, 2023 613

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

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

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

Gloria Steinem

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Matthew Arnold

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.

Orson Scott Card

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

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.