Now we know why some writers drink!

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Now we know why some writers drink!

December 23, 2023December 23, 2023 224

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:

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Stephen King

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

Clarence Budington Kelland

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 most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

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

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

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

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 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 is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

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