Now we know why some writers drink!

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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023December 23, 2023 257

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:

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

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

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

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

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

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

C. J. Cherryh

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

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

Jim Morrison

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

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

Jodi Picoult

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

T.S. Eliot

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

E. B. White

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

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

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.