Top 100 Advice To Writers Quotes
#1. My advice to writers is this:
Walk, talk, breathe, laugh, cry, fall, rise, fail, succeed, run, jump, love, hate, hide, seek, learn, work, play, feel, LIVE.
Then write it down.
S. Alex Martin
#2. My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college.
Kurt Vonnegut
#3. My best advice to writers is get yourself born in an interesting place.
Pierre Berton
#4. Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
#5. Best advice to writers - Read, write, read, write - repeat!
Lilly Cain
#6. everything i know about love
is that it hurts
and is almost always never returned
the way you want it to.
but i have hope
because i do not know everything.
AVA.
#7. Your writing should be filled with simple complexities and complex simplicities. Because that is life.
Christy Hall
#8. How many writers still dare compare a woman to Nature, like Campion? - there is a garden in her face - how lovely ...
John Geddes
#9. I'm not talented or gifted. I'm a committed, meticulous workaholic. The only reason I succeed is because I refuse to fail.
Jessie Snow
#10. I'd never be where I am if more successful writers hadn't taken an interest in me and done me a good turn - be it chiming in with constructive criticism or giving me sound advice about my career plan.
Sara Sheridan
#11. ...being "rather unique" is no more possible than being rather pregnant.
William Zinsser
#12. Every word I write is a seed that I may nurture into a small, beautiful poem or a tall, soaring tree.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#13. You ought to stop everything and write the sacred-words as its flashes in your mind.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#14. You will need seed money, so begin saving for your book. Don't give up. Also, write down the ideas that you have right away so you don't lose them.
Soraya Diase Coffelt
#15. To listen to critics, pro or con, and take their words to heart is to subcontract your self-esteem to strangers. (from Workbook)
Steven Heighton
#16. When you write a manuscript, it feels like being in a relationship with someone. You'll hate it, get bored with it, be pissed of, like you just want to break up. But, just like any relationship, you will fall in love again and again, like you don't want to lose it.
Alvi Syahrin
#17. When you have something meaningful to say, you lose your desire for much grammar; for only in the incompetence of words does one seek the redeeming power of vocabulary.
King Samuel Benson
#18. I do not recommend writing a screenplay in two weeks.
Christy Hall
#19. No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.
Laurie Colwin
#20. I personally believe that one learns to write by writing.
Jack Jordan
#21. And that's another piece of advice I'll give junior writers; when you get to the point where they take you to lunch, let the editor suggest where to go.
Jerry Pournelle
#22. I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment.
William Zinsser
#23. Because all writers are human beings first and writers second, my guess is that any advice for living with a writer is about the same as advice for living with a plumber or a refrigerator salesperson.
Clyde Edgerton
#24. Upon the one thing every writer absolutely must have, and that is intellectual curiosity.
Philip Athans
#25. ...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#26. Writers, that deep dark secret is not something you should hide from the world. It is your gift. Take it from memory and illuminate it in literature,shake the dust from it, unless it will get you arrested, lol.
Kevin R. Hill
#27. Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword.
Max Hawthorne
#28. Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#29. They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams.
Haruki Murakami
#30. Write the truest sentence you know. Then write another."
Hemingway's advice to other young writers in "A Moveable Feast.
Ernest Hemingway,
#31. The muse is fickle; ergo, when she knocks, ANSWER! It may take a while, but trust me, she WILL knock. In the meantime, keep your ear pressed firmly to the door.
Quentin R. Bufogle
#32. Once, if you told people you were self-published, they'd look at you like you were a smelly old jobless hobo just come off a dusty boxcar with soupcan shoes and a hat made from a coyote skull.
Chuck Wendig
#33. Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.
Shannon Celebi
#34. Writers don't suffer from insanity, they depend upon it!
Avijeet Das
#35. Don't try to describe an orgasm if you've never had one.
Marty Rubin
#36. The divine thoughts comes from God, we are only vessel for its transmission.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#37. You think you have no 'talent'? Write anyway. lots of people with 'talent' don't actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have 'talent.
M. Kirin
#38. Whenever I'm asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you're being told.
John Green
#39. My advice to young writers is, if you can't marry money, at least don't marry envy.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#40. People can't read a book if they don't know it exists. All authors need to do marketing, regardless of how they published.
Jo Linsdell
#41. The only advice [for new writers and poets] I can offer is to be yourself: not the self someone else wants you to be, but the self you are. Enjoy yourself and your life. But most of all travel and eat. That's how we learn.
Nikki Giovanni
#42. The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.
William Zinsser
#43. The dreamtime of creative work is a turnstile to eternity. (from Workbok)
Steven Heighton
#44. The easier you make it look, the more difficult it is. Creating characters out of nothing, and making them interesting - and that's another advice I would give to writers.
Jackie Collins
#47. Let failure be your workshop. See it for what is is: the world walking you through a tough but necessary semester, free of tuition. (from Workbook)
Steven Heighton
#50. When we sit down to write, we psychically enter a sanctuary. This safe haven is our own personal space where we can say whatever is on our mind, where we can talk about what matters most to us, where we can imagine the kind of world that we would like to live.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#51. Write for impact first, money second. If you do it the other way around, you'll end up with less of either.
Don Roff
#52. Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#53. When I told my teachers I wanted to be a writer, alot of them encouraged me to lower my expectations and to be more realistic. So I rode away on my magical, winged horse, spraying faerie dust behind me, and laughing manically as I went.
M.E. Vaughan
#54. You never finish writing a novel, you eventually abandon it.
Tom Winton
#55. ..here's the editor's prescription, writer: 1000 words daily until next checkup.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#56. So there was a constant flow and a thin line there between reality and television and yes, much of what I was experiencing in my real life was also what was going on in the television show to the extent that I had to take writers' advice and from the counselors around.
Alan Thicke
#57. My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly - all these make for great stories.
Chuck Palahniuk
#58. Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we've thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#59. When young writers approach me for advice, I remind them, as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with no help available anywhere. Which is how it should be.
John Banville
#61. The sooner you finish procrastinating, the sooner you can get back to your art.
Stephanie Lennox
#62. My advice to aspiring actors and writers is that your career's success is totally your responsibility. You need to make it happen. There is no end point to an artist's work, no set time line you have to live up to.
Christian Keiber
#63. Advice to beginning SF writers? Write a lot, finish what you write, and when it's done, keep sending it out for quite awhile.
Rudy Rucker
#64. Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it.
Don Roff
#65. There is no such thing as an 'unemployed writer', only an unemployed mind
Kevin Cowdall
#66. I had neither expert aid nor advice. I studied no courses in writing; until a year or so ago, I never read a book by anybody advising writers how to write.
Robert E. Howard
#68. Live inside your stories, yes, but do not hide behind them.
Christy Hall
#69. I know you've all heard the advice, "Show, don't tell." The best writers don't tell you, and quite frankly they don't just show you
they make you feel it, live it, taste it, touch it. Storytelling is about being in the moment with the characters.
Josh Lanyon
#70. There's really only one good writing habit: You must write constantly.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#71. Give all that you can.
No more. No less.
Every. Single. Day.
Christy Hall
#73. It's better to be remembered for what you said, not what you earned.
Carla H. Krueger
#74. ...writing allows us to reposition ourselves so we can see what is otherwise in our mental blind spots or those things about oneself and the world that we neither can see nor understand from the spot where we stand.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#76. Writing a book with completely fictitious characters is like running a democracy, centered around a capital state. You constantly live with the fear & suspicion that one of the characters will start an uncontrollable rebellion.
Shomprakash Sinha Roy
#78. Don't fool yourself. Talking about writing is not the same as actually doing it.
Christy Hall
#80. It's honestly a wonder that writing groups produce writers at all, instead of walking insecurities raised entirely in echo chambers of bad advice.
Brandon Sanderson
#81. Cast a spell and the small flaws don't matter. (From Workbook)
Steven Heighton
#82. The three rules to writing a novel;
1) Write
2) Write more
3) Keep writing
Sci Furz
#83. Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.
Deana J. Driver
#84. Heinlein's Rules for Writers
Rule One: You Must Write
Rule Two: Finish What Your Start
Rule Three: You Must Refrain From Rewriting, Except to Editorial Order
Rule Four: You Must Put Your Story on the Market
Rule Five: You Must Keep it on the Market until it has Sold
Robert A. Heinlein
#85. If a writer starts worring about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line.
Baby Halder
#87. Writing is a form of art. Do not use New Times Roman or Arial because it's boring and hackneyed.
Natalya Vorobyova
#88. Don't let your ego write checks your character can't cash.
another from the world of tweets
Robin Glasser
#89. There's just one advice for an aspiring writer; write.
Sci Furz
#91. Some writers closet themselves - I write wherever I am because that's where life is happening ...
John Geddes
#92. Writing is a profession that has no real career structure and your best advice when you hit a difficulty is probably going to come from another writer one or two rungs on the career ladder ahead of you.
Sara Sheridan
#96. It's good to write badly. Things can only get better.
Alan Dapre
#98. If we are artists- hell, whether or not we're artists- it is our job, our responsibility, perhaps even our sacred calling, to take whatever life has handed us and make something new, something that wouldn't have existed if not for the fire, the genetic mutation, the sick baby, the accident.
Dani Shapiro
#99. I'll be blasted', he said, 'if I ever write another word, or try to write another word, to please Nick Greene or the Muse. Bad, good, or indifferent, I'll write, from this day forward, to please myself
Virginia Woolf
#100. As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story
Richard Yates
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