Published Writer Quotes

#1. Every published writer suffers through that first draft because most of the time, that's a disappointment.

Rebecca Stead

#2. Dreamers become writers, and for me, being a published writer is a dream come true.

David A. Adler

#3. I dream that one day I would be a published writer and people would read my books - if not, I would be living in the mountains in a small hut, near a pond where swans swim, writing a diary for myself.

Srinidhi.R

#4. Glad to know about all of you who care about books, including or especially poetry. I'm a much published writer/editor of 12 books (medical nonfiction, literary novels, mysteries) and much short work, inc. prize-winning pieces.

Carole Spearin McCauley

#5. To be a writer, you must write. To be a published writer you must finish what you write and then get what you've written in front of the outside world.

George H. Scithers

#6. Until I became a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of books on how to write and courses on the subject ... they would have spoiled my natural style; made me observe caution; would have hedged me with rules.

Isaac Asimov

#7. In the end, the difference between a published writer and an unpublished one comes down to one thing: The unpublished writer gave up, and the published writer didn't.

Judy Delton

#8. 'Made it as a writer'? I'm still wondering if I've made it as a writer. I've made it as a published writer of the type of SF that I want to write and read, but I'm still waiting for that big breakthrough.

Eric Brown

#9. Dale Mayer is a prolific multi-published writer. She's best known for her Psychic Visions series. Besides her romantic suspense/thrillers, Dale also writes paranormal

Dale Mayer

#10. Every famous writer was once an unknown writer. If publishers never published new writers, they wouldn't be publishing anyone at all after a while.

Victoria Strauss

#11. My mum was a librarian, and she brought home a lot of interesting books, and we just read and read. I suppose I didn't really think I could be a writer myself until I was working in editing in my 20s and discovered that actually, the books that came in were not very much like published books.

Margo Lanagan

#12. In 1998, while serving two consecutive life sentences, Puente began corresponding with a writer named Shane Bugbee and sending him recipes which were subsequently published in a book called Cooking with a Serial Killer.
Call me crazy, but I wouldn't touch that food with a ten-foot pole.

Jodi Picoult

#13. As a writer, you write the book, you give it to your editor, it's copy edited, it's published, it's thrown out there, and then there's a response.

David Bergen

#14. A writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino's, while inside there dwells a frail, hopeful butterfly of a spirit.

Joyce Carol Oates

#15. I'm a novelist, editor, short story writer. I also teach, and I freelance sometimes as an arts consultant. Most of my books have been published by Warner Books, now known as Grand Central Books.

Nalo Hopkinson

#16. I'm not constrained by being a genre writer. Any story I can imagine, I can cast as a fantasy novel and probably get it published.

Lynn Abbey

#17. Bootlicking is only a way to get published, not to become a writer

Himmilicious

#18. As a writer, I first felt successful before I was published.

Patrick Rothfuss

#19. I think the path to becoming a writer has become more through the novel. It's easier to get a novel published than a book of stories, obviously, especially through big publishers.

Jess Walter

#20. Book reviewer: Very often a writer who has never been published taking out their frustrations on a writer who has.

Raul Ramos Y Sanchez

#21. Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.

Joyce Carol Oates

#22. I'm a writer who stacks cat food for a living. It's true: I have a master's degree in creative writing, I've published two critically successful books, and I get paid to replenish the shelves of my local food co-op with pet food, sponges and toilet paper. Nine days out of 10, I do it quite happily.

Ali Liebegott

#23. If you want to be a writer, you write. Everybody wants to get published. You gotta play your long game.

Paul Harding

#24. 'In the Cut' was not what readers expected of me. Before it was published, I was seen as a women's writer, which meant that I wrote movingly about flowers and children.

Susanna Moore

#25. And in fact, writing is one of the worst-paid professions in the world: The average book sells fewer than 500 copies The average writer makes less than $10,000 per book advance. The average self-published author makes less $5000 in royalties per year.

Monica Leonelle

#26. I'm certified as an instructor and I do teach courses at a cram school, but I'm not exactly a teacher. I write fiction, but I've never been published, so I'm not a writer yet, either." "You're nothing." Tengo nodded. "Exactly. For the moment, I'm nothing.

Haruki Murakami

#27. I've been a writer since I was 16. I didn't get published until I was 24. I know that sounds crazy.

Markus Zusak

#28. She's a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn't be published outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with the mind.

Ayn Rand

#29. I always wanted to be a writer ... 'Critical Care' was my first published work. I was 34 when it came out. I was accumulating 'Critical Care' for years. I would go for a whole year and not touch it. And then I'd go back to it.

Richard Dooling

#30. Let me now praise the American writer James Dickey. In 1970, his novel 'Deliverance' was published. I found it to be 278 pages that approached perfection. Its tightness of construction and assuredness of style reminded me of 'The Great Gatsby.'

Pat Conroy

#31. Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything.

Steve Martin

#32. I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

Erica Jong

#33. It's perceived as an accolade to be published as a 'literary' writer, but, actually, it's pompous and it's fake. Literary fiction is often nothing more than a genre in itself.

Neil Cross

#34. I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.

Isabel Allende

#35. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs ... The way I write is who I am, or have become ...

Joan Didion

#36. A writer who wants to be translated and published abroad faces a very difficult challenge: first of all, he must make sure that his book is cosmopolitan in the best sense of the word, that it is interesting to a global audience. Nobody is going to read about problems that they don't care about.

Sergei Lukyanenko

#37. I maintain an ongoing survey of Internet Publishing and self publishing, so that it is now possible for any writer with a book to get it published at nominal cost or free, and to have it on sale at booksellers like Amazon.

Piers Anthony

#38. I think it's very, very, very hard to get a book published. I never want to be one of those teachers that say, 'don't do this, ' because how sad would the world be if people didn't create art and write? But, it's not an easy journey being a writer.

Alyson Richman

#39. 'being published' is not the same as being a real writer.

Scarlett Thomas

#40. No one inspired me to write, but writer Harlan Ellison terrified me into getting published.

Dan Simmons

#41. It's funny, particularly when you're a writer and you're doing well, you have that sense of like, "Oh! My view of the world is the one that's going to be published."

Daniel Handler

#42. I've read science fiction my whole life. I never really dreamed that I'd be a published science fiction writer myself, but a short story I started years ago sort of demanded to be turned into a novel.

Ramez Naam

#43. Long before I was a writer, when I was just a haphazard reader and a dreamer of stories, I learnt about an influential book by Harold Bloom. 'The Anxiety of Influence', published in 1973 when I was five years old, is taken up with the terrifying influence of poets on each other.

Andrew O'Hagan

#44. I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

Brian Aldiss

#45. As for [Amiri] Baraka, he and I have disagreements. I mean, he becomes a demagogue when there's an audience. He's a nice guy in private. I mean I like the guy; he's a terrific writer. I've published two of his books. Baraka is one of these fundamentalists who is prone to idol worship.

Ishmael Reed

#46. She told me, and she would be. She told me that I was not a good enough writer to be published there

Ernest Hemingway,

#47. If you like to tell stories and compose sentences, and if you work hard at being good at these things, then you are a writer even if you haven't published anything.

Trenton Lee Stewart

#48. My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.

Ian Rankin

#49. In the final analysis, it is not critics who create literary canons, it is other writers who create them ... A writer can have published thirty-seven volumes, but if that writer doesn't interest other writers, they will all molder in the library and nobody will ever want to read them again.

Helen Vendler

#50. There must be a dozen films now based on Philip K. Dick novels or stories, far more than any other published science fiction writer. He's sort of become the go-to guy for weird science fiction notions.

John Kessel

#51. At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.

Walter Mosley

#52. There's a word for a writer who never gives up: published.

J.A. Konrath

#53. A whole bunch of agents and editors looked at my stories, and they all said, in effect, 'You're a pretty good writer and you should probably get these published; when you grow up and write a novel, get in touch.'

Bob Shacochis

#54. Anyone who wants to be a writer should, if given the opportunity, hang out with "real writers," that is, poets or writers who are lions in literature, semi-lions, or published authors.

Kirby Wright

#55. Ray Bradbury published his first story 29 years before I was born. He established himself as an international writer long before I arrived. When my mom was nine months pregnant with me, my father read Bradbury aloud to her as I listened intently, in utero. And I later became his biographer.

Sam Weller

#56. When I came to America, I was already a writer, already published in Bosnia. I was planning to go back, but I had no choice but to stay here after the civil war, so I enrolled at Northwestern in a master's program and studied American literature.

Aleksandar Hemon

#57. Owen Zupp is an award-winning writer, published author and commercial pilot with nearly 17,000 hours of flight time. He has flown all manner of machines from antique biplanes to globe-trotting Boeings and shared the journey with readers around the world in a variety of publications.

Owen Zupp

#58. The only difference between a published and unpublished writer is a tolerance for imperfection.

Junot Diaz

#59. The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.

Andrew Vachss

#60. For a writer, published works are like fallen flowers, but the expected new work is like a calyx waiting to blossom.

Cao Yu

#61. Getting a book published made me feel a little bit sad. I felt driven by the need to write a book, rather than the need to write. I needed to figure out what was important to me as a writer.

Nicole Krauss