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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023May 9, 2025 501

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:

Why Writers Drink

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

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

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

Jeanette Walls

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

Matthew Arnold

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.

Bob Dylan

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

Jodi Picoult

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

Stephen King

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

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.

Douglas Adams

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

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 Quote

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.