Top 100 Quotes About Writing Block
#1. You can't think yourself out of a writing block; you have to write yourself out of a thinking block.
John Rogers
#2. 'Shun security,' I advise aspiring novelists when they complain to me that they are stuck. 'Get disoriented. Maybe your agonizing writing block isn't agonizing enough. Your enemy is comfort.'
John Burdett
#4. Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.
Steve Martin
#5. Confront the page that taunts you with its whiteness. Face your enemy and fill it with words. You are bigger and stronger than a piece of paper.
Fennel Hudson
#6. I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.
Francois Mauriac
#7. I haven't written in a week. It's like holding your breath under water. You feel an awful constriction and then the instinct to propel yourself.
D.A. Botta
#8. Writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all
Charles Bukowski
#9. I block in days / nights for writing where I don't touch emails or social media.
Julia Woodman
#10. Don't waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
#11. I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art on the road that may indeed end in extinction.
Stephen King
#12. Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.
Jennifer Hudson Taylor
#13. I don't believe in writer's block. If I can't write, I go out and live. Then, if I'm a writer, I'll find something to write.
Peter Arpesella
#14. The only reason you can't write is because you don't.
A.A. Patawaran
#15. Writer's block' is just a fancy way of saying 'I don't feel like doing any work today.
Meagan Spooner
#16. Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block.
Martin Amis
#17. If you're a writer, the insight of other writers - if there's some kind of Holy Grail message on how to deal with writer's block or how to deal with any problem that can come up - whether you're writing about yourself or a group of people, I find that very interesting.
Jim Rash
#18. Every word I write is a seed that I may nurture into a small, beautiful poem or a tall, soaring tree.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#19. I don't usually think of my writing as a 'challenge' because I enjoy the process so much. I suppose that's what's helped me to avoid 'writer's block' all these years.
Melody Carlson
#20. Sometimes writer's block is no more than a signal that you have not done enough research.
Sophy Burnham
#21. I often tell people to stop being afraid of writing bad poetry, or bad anything. I think that a lot of times, when people claim that they have writer's block, or that they get stuck, it's just because they're scared of writing bad things.
Sarah Kay
#22. There is no better way to learn how to write than by writing a novel.
Lawrence Block
#23. In creation myths, a god shapes mud or clay into living form, much like a potter throws a pot or a sculptor reveals the statue within a block of marble. But a writer has to create his own clay or stone before he can begin shaping life from it.
Stuart Dybek
#24. The last thing we discover in composing a work is what to put down first.
Blaise Pascal
#25. Writer's block is a phony, made up, BS excuse for not doing your work.
Jerry Seinfeld
#26. I'm not patient at all. I avoid writer's block by writing. I power through with a bad version, so I can move on, and usually once I've gotten to the next scene, I'll discover what was missing from the bad version scene. Then I can easily rewrite it to get back on the right path.
Anders Holm
#27. I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. ("Advance Notice")
Richard Matheson
#28. Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.
Thomas Bernhard
#30. One thing I knew about the novelist's task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.
Philip Sington
#31. Professional writers don't have muses; they have mortgages.
Larry Kahaner
#32. ARGH! There's no such thing [as writer's block]. Seriously: THERE. IS. NO. SUCH. THING. You know what there is? There's a bunch of problems, creative and otherwise, that can stop you writing. They are not block. They are important skills.
Nick Harkaway
#33. When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears
I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer's block.
Irving Stone
#34. 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
#35. I just write all the time. In my whole life I've never had what I've heard people talk about writer's block. I've never had that. Life is like a song to me. I just hear everything in music, so I have never once thought "Well, I'm never gonna be able to write again." I've got thousands of songs.
Dolly Parton
#36. I'm a little harsh. When people say, 'I have writers block. What do you suggest?' I say, 'If you can't write, don't write. No one needs your writing. Don't torture yourself.'
Lorrie Moore
#37. Writing something new is an effective way to get rid of writer's block. Or you can observe the people around you and fantasize like I do.
B.A. Gabrielle
#38. I don't get writers block. I get writer has too many ideas and doesn't know which one to start next, block.
Tyler Hojberg
#39. My imagination was running amok again. Twice in one night. This never happens when I'm sitting in front of a typewriter.
Gary Reilly
#40. 82/ The truth is that writing is simply not reliable. You can't count on it to be there just because you've made time for it. In fact, making space might make it disappear.
Kim Addonizio
#41. She meant you have to live a story for a time.'
'And?'
'And then you can write it, in time. What have you lived?'
'Kind of a personal question for Twitterland.'
'Kind of the perfect question to answer in fiction.
L.L. Barkat
#42. I write because it's all I know how to do. Writing is my anchor and my purpose. My life is informed by writing, whether the work is going well or I'm stuck in the hell of writer's block, which I'm happy to report only occurs about once a day.
Sue Grafton
#43. Writer's block is when your imaginary friends won't talk to you.
Mary Papas
#44. How do you paint a writer's block?
Just fill it with fifty shades of black.
Ana Claudia Antunes
#45. Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.
Robert B. Parker
#48. To be motivated to write a novel, I need to be unable not to write.
Johnny Rich
#50. Theoretically there's no reason one should get [writer's block], if one understands that writing, after all, is only writing, neither something one ought to feel deeply guilty about nor something one ought to be inordinately proud of.
John Gardner
#51. Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#52. The thing I want to write most is the next thing I write.
Carroll Bryant
#53. The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.
John Gardner
#54. I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza and write.
Francesca Lia Block
#55. There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock.
Anne Lamott
#56. Writer's Block: making authors miserable since the Stone Age.
Max Hawthorne
#57. In 25 years of writing novels, I've never had anything that felt like writer's block.
Richard Powers
#58. Writer's Block is just an excuse by people who don't write for not writing.
Giando Sigurani
#59. I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.
Roy Blount Jr.
#60. Writer's block? I've heard of this. This is when a writer cannot write, yes? Then that person isn't a writer anymore. I'm sorry, but the job is getting up in the fucking morning and writing for a living.
Warren Ellis
#61. I tell my students there is such a thing as 'writer's block,' and they should respect it. You shouldn't write through it. It's blocked because it ought to be blocked, because you haven't got it right now.
Toni Morrison
#62. Writing is hard. That's why so few people stick to it and actually finish things. And why you have a right to be immensely proud when you finish something.
[There Is No Such Thing as Writers' Block: Blog post, October 7, 2001]
Andy Ihnatko
#63. I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.
Fred Saberhagen
#64. Here's the million-dollar question: how are you going to write this book if you're afraid to start writing? Give your friend Doubt a name, and then block his calls.
Kami Garcia
#65. I knew all too well the damage of scarlet ink smeared across page-after-page ...
Jazz Feylynn
#66. Every bloody mark had assassinated my writing along the way.
Jazz Feylynn
#68. I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!
Loudon Wainwright III
#69. What is hell to a writer? Hell is being too busy to find the time to write or being unable to find the inspiration. Hell is suddenly finding the words but being away from your notebook or typewriter. Hell is when the verses slip away through your fingers and they never return again.
R.M. Engelhardt
#71. Never fails. Every new book I write seems impossible, writes like I'm typing from dictation, edits like I didn't write it, and finishes like I couldn't possibly have written it.
Kris Rafferty
#72. I don't experience writer's block, I only have periods of severe writer's diarrhoea; an incoherent mess of unfitting words placed in random sentences. Luckily, I can usually separate the shit from "the shit" later on.
Kevin Focke
#73. I assumed this yoke would encase me as well as any another hobble. Only this one bound the mind.
Jazz Feylynn
#74. Writing isn't difficult. Writing well is difficult. What is most difficult is being with the interior experience that manifests as resistance to writing.
H. Raven Rose
#75. I've only suffered writer's block badly once, and that was during the writing of Chamber of Secrets. I had my first burst of publicity about the first book and it paralysed me. I was scared the second book wouldn't measure up, but I got through it!
J.K. Rowling
#76. All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. If you imagine the world listening, you'll never write a line. That's why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.
Erica Jong
#77. I'm not sure why writing for others became harder. Probably a reluctance to give away anything you might conceivably use yourself caused a block. I did it, but it remained hard when it had once been easy.
Dick Cavett
#78. His eyes never blinked or wavered from mine, encompassing me in a field of control.
Jazz Feylynn
#79. Writer's block is just another name for fear.
Jacob Nordby
#81. Writer's block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.
Joseph Campbell
#82. I don't believe in writers' block. Do doctors have 'doctors block?' Do plumbers have 'plumbers' block?" No. We all have days when we don't feel like working, but why do writers turn that into something so damn special by giving it a faintly romantic name.
Larry Kahaner
#83. The trick to writer's block is to sack up and write through it, you see.
Jeph Jacques
#84. Nothing's a better cure for writer's block than to eat ice cream right out of the carton.
Don Roff
#85. Come on brain, think of things
Come on brain, think of things
Come on brain, be so smart
Lin-Manuel Miranda
#87. Protect your voice and your vision. If going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don't do it. ... Do what gets you to write and not what blocks you. ... Don't take any guff off anybody.
Anne Rice
#88. The trouble with a baby, for writists, is that they take away your useful melancholy, even the energy to invent some.
D.A. Botta
#89. Some people talk of writer's block - you got all of these ideas but nothing happens. The truth is, there's no such thing as writer's block. It's to the degree that you want to write. The thing is that these things show up whenever they feel like it.
Jon Fratelli
#90. Blocks usually stem from fear of being judged. If you imagine the world is listening, you'll never write a line.
Erica Jong
#92. Not knowing stuff - like how your story ends before you start writing - is the seed of a lot of writer's block.
Dan Alatorre
#93. Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.
Adam Gopnik
#94. Writing is all about tents: sometimes you're competent, sometimes you're eloquetent.
Kevin Focke
#95. I don't believe in writer's block, writing well is very easy; it's writing horribly, the horrible work necessary to do to get to writing well, that is so difficult one may just not be willing to do it.
Dean Young
#96. In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those things that we hear about writers.
Jose Saramago
#97. You'll have to take me to some museums, he said. He was being the young man on the road, following the sun because gray weather made him suicidal, writing his poetry in his mind in diners and gas station men's rooms across the country.
Francesca Lia Block
#98. The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on. Given the general oddity of writers, no wonder there are no sure cures.
John Gardner
#99. The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one ...
Lawrence Block
#100. Writer's block is real. It happens. Some days you sit down at the
old typewriter, put your fingers on the keys, and nothing pops
into your head. Blanko. Nada. El nothingissimo. What you do
when this happens is what separates you from the one-of-thesedays-
I'm-gonna-write-a-book crowd.
James N. Frey
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