Now we know why some writers drink!

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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023December 23, 2023 136

There is a stereotype out there about writers. They’re talented and frustrated and hit the bottle way too often. Maybe the reason some talented writers are frustrated and drink to excess is because of what they’re asked to write. Example:

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

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

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

Matthew Arnold

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

Truman Capote

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

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

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

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

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

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.