Now we know why some writers drink!

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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023December 23, 2023 264

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:

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

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

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

Matthew Arnold

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

Stephen King

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

E. B. White

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

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

Jodi Picoult

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

Romulus Linney

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

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

Stephen Wright

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

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

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

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

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

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

Jeanette Walls

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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.