Top 100 Writer Advice Quotes
#1. Writer advice ... Write. Finish things. Go for walks. Read a lot & outside your comfort zone. Stay interested. Daydream. Write.
Neil Gaiman
#2. ...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
#3. It wont do to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't be careful enough.
William Zinsser
#4. There may be a Nurse Ratched-like listing of things that must be done right this moment: foods that must come out of the freezer, appointments that must be canceled or made, hairs that must be tweezed. But you hold an imaginary gun to your head and make yourself stay at the desk.
Anne Lamott
#5. It's better to be remembered for what you said, not what you earned.
Carla H. Krueger
#6. Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? "She drove me to my practice at four in the morning," etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.
Paul Theroux
#7. Do you think you're not 'ready' to start that big story idea/project you've been thinking about forever?
Jump in. Write anyway. The only way to make the impossible a reality is to take a leap of faith.
M. Kirin
#9. Originality is not writing the story that has never been told, but writing the stories only you can tell.
M. Kirin
#10. You can't be beautiful and a writer, because to be a writer you have to be the one doing the looking; if you're beautiful people will be looking at you.
Niall Williams
#11. I think the biggest advice I can offer is don't just pick one story and stop, write as much as you can, as many stories as you can. The best thing about being a writer is, a writer's craft is nearly perfect because a writer can go anywhere and do his craft.
Dwayne McDuffie
#12. Advice from a Romance Writer: Guys, make your woman feel pretty even on an 'off' day. Trust me, good things will come of it.
Michelle M. Pillow
#14. I can give advice to anyone interested in writing in one word: Read! I think it's much more important to be a reader than to be a writer!
Linda Sue Park
#15. Be true to the writer within you; tell the story you're dying to tell in exactly the way you wish to tell it, and don't trust anyone who tries to sway you otherwise.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#16. There is no such thing as an 'unemployed writer', only an unemployed mind
Kevin Cowdall
#17. Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.
Ernest Hemingway,
#19. If you can't stand your own company alone in a room for long hours, or, when it gets tough, the feeling of being in a locked cell, or, when it gets tougher still, the vague feeling of being buried alive
then don't be a writer.
Graham Swift
#20. I've often been given the career advice to not wear too many hats, which, of course, has just encouraged me to wear other hats, such as being a writer, being a curator, or just doing anything outside of the definition of an artist.
Matthew Brannon
#21. Personally, I am always more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and is secure enough not to 'lay it on' in the telling. Aim for complexity of thought, not expression.
Noah Lukeman
#22. If a writer knows everything that is going to happen, then his book is dead before he begins it.
V.S. Naipaul
#23. Most people probably didn't think I'd make it as a professional writer. But I couldn't follow their advice.
Haruki Murakami
#24. ..here's the editor's prescription, writer: 1000 words daily until next checkup.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#25. Writer's Block: making authors miserable since the Stone Age.
Max Hawthorne
#26. You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.
Nancy Kress
#27. It's good to know wave and particle alpha code, but more than that, the writer must go to the heart of life ...
John Geddes
#28. I learn from everything I do, right and wrong. I think it helps me grow as a writer and a person.
Darynda Jones
#29. There is no ceremony, no initiation ritual, no secret hand-shake. All you need to be a writer is to write.
M. Kirin
#30. Writers will often find themselves steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.
William Strunk Jr.
#31. A writer without authority? Impossible. as Kenneth Burke says, creation implies authority in the sense of originator ...
John Geddes
#32. All great writers share one thing in common:
They finished their books.
M. Kirin
#33. If you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, "Nobody's," In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.
Annie Dillard
#34. 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
#35. If you're a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.
Theodora Goss
#36. Not knowing stuff - like how your story ends before you start writing - is the seed of a lot of writer's block.
Dan Alatorre
#38. 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
#40. Being a writer, I think, is much like being a parent or a pet parent in my case. I love all of my characters equally, even if I want you to hate them, I love them. If you don't love all your characters you're not doing it right.
Ellie Elisabeth
#41. The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.
Michael Korda
#42. When a person sets out to learn from others and not to teach others he becomes a true writer.
Carla H. Krueger
#43. There's just one advice for an aspiring writer; write.
Sci Furz
#44. To forget oneself-to lose oneself in the music, in the moment- that kind of absorption seems to be at the heart of every creative endeavor.
Dani Shapiro
#45. 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
#46. If you wanna be a writer, you must learn to paint a picture with words.
Brian Jacques
#47. 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
#48. Almost every single thing you hope publication will do for you is a fantasy, a hologram
it's the eagle on your credit card that only seems to soar.
Anne Lamott
#49. An author who rewrites his own work must essentially be two people. One is the free flowing uncritical writer who creates the bulk of the material - the other is the extremely critical editor whose aim it is to make the book as good as it can become.
Gudjon Bergmann
#50. Description is the color in the canvas of your story.
M. Kirin
#51. All great stories began as shitty first drafts.
There are no exceptions to this.
M. Kirin
#52. I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I'm in good company there.
J.K. Rowling
#53. Advice for a long and happy life - never tell a writer you have fixed their work. Ever.
C.S. Woolley
#54. You're writing someone's 'future' favorite book.
M. Kirin
#55. Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#56. ...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#57. Upon the one thing every writer absolutely must have, and that is intellectual curiosity.
Philip Athans
#58. 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
#59. To be a writer - write! To be an author - publish! To be a bestselling author - never stop writing!
David Maxwell
#60. 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
#61. If you can quit, then quit. If you can't quit, you're a writer.
R.A. Salvatore
#62. 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer
Write.
Write more.
Write even more.
Write even more than that.
Write when you don't want to.
Write when you do.
Write when you have something to say.
Write when you don't.
Write every day.
Keep writing.
Brian Clark
#63. I personally believe that one learns to write by writing.
Jack Jordan
#64. I have a final word of advice to our students. If you work very, very hard, this is the kind of actor, writer and director you may turn out to be, and if you work extra hard, this is the kind of person you may turn out to be.
Alan Alda
#65. 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
#66. No good writing flows from a polluted well - you can write about monsters, but you can't be one ...
John Geddes
#67. If you want to be a writer, you have to keep writing, all the time, and when you're not writing, be thinking about and planning writing.
May J. Panayi
#68. A good writer should draw the reader in by starting in the middle of the story with a hook, then go back and fill in what happened before the hook. Once you have the reader hooked, you can write whatever you want as you slowly reel them in.
Roland Smith
#69. Stop beating yourself up over all the days you didn't work on your story. Focus on what you can do today.
Sit down, and write.
M. Kirin
#70. Every word I write is a seed that I may nurture into a small, beautiful poem or a tall, soaring tree.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#71. ...being "rather unique" is no more possible than being rather pregnant.
William Zinsser
#72. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is beyond our reach. The best time to write is now, in the present.
M. Kirin
#73. Let your story grow. Let it surprise you, and it will certainly surprise your readers.
M. Kirin
#74. Writer's block isn't always a problem. It can be a process of writing that helps us write better.
Jennifer Hudson Taylor
#75. Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.
Ben H. Winters
#76. Writing is more than just a method to tell stories. It's a way to find healing, and to healing others.
M. Kirin
#77. It is indeed difficult to make a living as a writer, and my advice to anyone contemplating a literary career is to have some other trade.
William S. Burroughs
#78. The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.
John Gardner
#79. Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#80. I know one writer who has been subscribing authors without their permission and sending out what she thinks are helpful advice sheets, but they come off as if she's a know-it-all. She thinks she's marketing herself and her work. All she's really doing is turning readers off.
M.J. Rose
#81. The biggest difference between writing a movie and writing a novel? No one ever tries to sleep with me to get into one of my novels.
Mylo Carbia
#83. 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
#84. I think if a writer is being honest they'd admit to a file full of a dozen or more stories that are all started to varying degrees. They're like the kid who wants to be a firefighter and a police officer and an astronaut.
Dan Alatorre
#87. There's a fine line between appropriate and inappropriate, but it better be a strong, clear line.' As a teacher, I took that advice to heart. As a writer, I asked, "'But what happens if the line isn't strong or clear?
Joseph Kenyon
#88. How do you paint a writer's block?
Just fill it with fifty shades of black.
Ana Claudia Antunes
#89. 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
#90. Only something extremely dire and disabling will ever stop a real writer from writing. Retirement is never an option.
Warren Adler
#91. The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.
William Zinsser
#92. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.
David Nicholls
#93. Writing is an adventure. There is no way to know where it will take you, and what you will find. You could find success. You could find fans. Or, best of all, you could find yourself.
M. Kirin
#94. From my writer's workshop, Know when it's time to put everything you've got on the page. Then, rip open a vein and do it!
Heather Burch
#95. To Grandma,
for being my first editor and giving me the best writing advice I've ever received: Christopher, I think you should wait until you're done with elementary school before worrying about being a failed writer.
Chris Colfer
#96. 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
#97. Never say you can't be a writer or a script writer, remember how well, characters in your dreams said their dialogues.
Dipesh Nepal
#98. When you're writing fiction or poetry ... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing ... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.
Raymond Carver
#99. Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, "It is the trade entering his body." The art must enter the body, too.
Annie Dillard
#100. Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.
Shannon Celebi
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