I did a Google search for: “best movies about writers.”

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I did a Google search for: “best movies about writers.”

August 31, 2018 470

It was just curiosity. And the top result was for a list of 10 compiled by writer Nicole Bianchi on her website!

If you’re a veteran writer, or an aspiring writer…or just love movies…go check out her page.

Two of those movies are big favorites of mine: Almost Famous and Finding Forrester. I have them both on disc. Finding Forrester stars Sean Connery as a writer who knocked it out of the park on his first attempt then became a recluse. He’s got a guy who runs his errands, he throws his mail in the trash, wears his socks inside out and is abrupt to the point of rudeness.

Rob Brown co-stars. Their paths cross and Forrester tutors the 16-year-old inner-city boy in the art of great writing. It’s constantly banging around on cable TV and when I happen to come across it, I watch. It’s great stuff. Mr. Brown had no acting experience at all. And his first time was with Connery! That he did so well amazes me; I would have been completely intimidated, not only by the distraction of the process of making a film, but also by Connery.

Here’s a tip of the hat to Ms. Bianchi for her wonderful top 10 list of movies about writers. Go check it out.

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

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

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

William Goldman

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

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

Stephen King

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

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

Stephen Wright

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

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

Romulus Linney

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

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

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

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

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

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

Tom Clancy

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

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