Ralph Keyes Quotes

#1. Anxiety is not only an inevitable part of the writing process but a necessary part. If you're not scared, you're not writing.

Ralph Keyes

#2. Writing can be wonderful therapy, and cheap at the price. At the very least, you eventually get bored by thinking about anxious topics and move on.

Ralph Keyes

#3. Be as creative in your tactics as you are in your writing. Find what gets your engine going, no matter how peculiar it may seem to others.

Ralph Keyes

#4. Authors always feel in danger of being abandoned by loved ones. This is a potent fear. Yet it's as inevitable as writer's cramp when we presume to write words for others to read.

Ralph Keyes

#5. I'm tempted to say that the top three reasons for hopelessness are rejection, rejection, rejection. But let's cast our net wider. 1) Not being able to write as well as we hoped we could. 2) Not being able to write at all. 3) Rejection.

Ralph Keyes

#6. One of the most fundamental of human fears is that our existence will go unnoticed.

Ralph Keyes

#7. I think that simply nudging yourself into unfamiliar settings - physical or emotional - can produce surprising results on the writing front.

Ralph Keyes

#8. Fear and courage are like lightning and thunder; they both sart out at the same time, but the fear travels faster and arrives sooner. If we just wait a moment, the requisite courage will be along shortly.

Ralph Keyes

#9. Writing about something was not the moral equivalent of doing it,

Ralph Keyes

#10. I prefer a man who is unskillful, who is an awkward writer, but who has something to say, who is dealing himself one time on every page.

Ralph Keyes

#11. Those who generate fog are Wizards of Oz hoping desperately that nobody pulls the curtain to reveal a trembling little writer behind it. This seldom happens. Readers who dare to point out that incomprehensible writing can't be comprehended risk being told that the problem is theirs.

Ralph Keyes

#12. Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.

Ralph Keyes

#13. Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.

Ralph Keyes

#14. Willa Cather said that she write best when she stopped trying to write and began simply to remember.

Ralph Keyes