Now we know why some writers drink!

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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023December 23, 2023 262

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:

In Hollywood, the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

Will Rogers

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

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

Michael Burke

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

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

Joseph Conrad

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

Truman Capote

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

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

Dan Poynter

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

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

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

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

Thomas Wolfe

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

Sloan Wilson

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

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

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

Stan Lee

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

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

E. B. White

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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