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You’ve heard of writer’s block. But have you heard of reader’s block?

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025 789

I found this in the August 2nd, 2019, New York Times. Fun reading…if you’re not suffering from reader’s block:

Reader’s block article

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

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

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

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

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.

Edward Albee

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

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

Matthew Arnold

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

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

Romulus Linney

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

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

Mickey Spillane

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

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

Oscar Wilde

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

Jodi Picoult

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

Stephen Leigh

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

Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.

Chet Cunningham

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.