Now we know why some writers drink!

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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023December 23, 2023 134

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:

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

Romulus Linney

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

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

I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

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

William Goldman

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

Matthew Arnold

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Robert Benchley

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

Michael Burke

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

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

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

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

Lawrence Wray

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

Anton Chekhov

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 reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

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

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

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