Have you heard of reader's block? - blog | 888-743-9939

Blog

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

August 5, 2019May 9, 2025 889

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

A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.

Robert McKee

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

Michael Burke

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

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

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

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

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

Stan Lee

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

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

Stephen King

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

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

Jodi Picoult

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

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

G.K. Chesterton

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

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

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

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

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