Writing Badly Quotes

#1. All writers start out writing badly, but with diligence and determination, we all get better. It's then that writing becomes truly fun and always engaging. When you no longer have to worry about how you write, you can start thinking about what to write.

Theo Fenraven

#2. For that reason you can't write with music playing, and anyone who says he can is either writing badly, or not listening to the music, or lying. You need to hear what you're writing, and for that you need silence.

Philip Pullman

#3. Good writers hate bad writing but hating bad writing doesn't make you good. Writing badly does.

Dan Harmon

#4. Even a day writing badly for me is 10 times better than a day where I don't write at all.

Andre Dubus III

#5. I've discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at all leads to nothing.

Anna Quindlen

#6. Of course I want to be a best seller because I'm in the business and I want to be read, but there is no money in the world that can compensate for writing badly.

David Lagercrantz

#7. Telling a story is like playing a fiddle. No one want's to hear it when it's done badly

K.A. Young

#8. How I would hate the reputation of being clever at writing but stupid and useless at everything else! I would rather be stupid at both than to choose to employ my good qualities as badly as that.

Michel De Montaigne

#9. If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.

John Ciardi

#10. Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style.

William Zinsser

#11. I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard.

Sara Zarr

#12. O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at all inthis place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me a loveletter ...

James Joyce

#13. An as-yet-unpublished poet in Boulder, Colorado, once said to me that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. I may seem, in the foregoing sketchy pages, to have followed her advice rather too well.

Joanna Russ

#14. Well into adulthood, writing has never gotten easier. It still only ever begins badly, and there are no guarantees that this is not the day when the jig is finally up.

David Rakoff

#15. Be willing and unafraid to write badly, because often the bad stuff ... forms a base on which to build something better.

Jennifer Egan

#16. This has been done by masters of the trade and Garcia had taken in every stock situation with amazing powers of retention, but he had not put things together right and had used extraordinary discernment in not adding one single touch of originality.

Felipe Alfau

#17. General writing about science, even if we do it badly, helps us to see our work in perspective and broadens our vision.

Martin Rees

#18. It's impossible to be a good writer if you haven't lived badly. A past life of drinking heavily, fighting and whoring all help to ease those words onto the page.

Ken Scott

#19. He who writes badly thinks badly

William Cobbett

#20. People always write on my Facebook that they've seen somebody they thought was me on the subway, and I was cursing badly.

Gary Shteyngart

#21. G.K. Chesterton once said: If something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. I live by this philosophy when I teach writing. It seems to me vastly more important that a student try a new technique in her writing, and use it imperfectly, than never try the technique at all.

Ralph Fletcher

#22. You have to write badly in order to write well.

William Faulkner

#23. When writing isn't going well-then the bad thing about being a writer is that I also have the freedom and flexibility to do something badly, and no one else can fix it for me.

Margaret Haddix

#24. I haven't had writer's block. I think it's because my process involves writing very badly.

Jennifer Egan

#25. When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

John Le Carre

#26. Before too long I was playing badly out in some bars around Memphis, but as soon as I learned a few chords I started writing my own stuff.

Bryan Hayes

#27. A thrilling story can be dull if told badly, but even the most mundane event can be elevated into a tale of epic scale by a good storyteller.

Johnny Rich

#28. Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.

Moliere

#29. We do not propose any rules; we offer observations. "No right on red" is a rule. "Driving at high speed toward a brick wall usually ends badly" is an observation.

Howard Mittelmark

#30. A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

Baron De Montesquieu

#31. A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

#32. We all have time to write. We have time to write the minute we are willing to write badly, to chase a dead end, to scribble a few words, to write for the hell of it instead of for the perfect and polished result.

Julia Cameron

#33. Cameron Crowe is someone who I've admired for so long, and I've been friends with him for many years, and I've wanted to work with him so badly that I just never stopped bothering him about writing a script that would be for a pilot.

J.J. Abrams

#34. There never was such an age in which so many people were able to write badly.

Israel Zangwill

#35. Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#36. (Slap) "Owhhh ... " Raymond yelled as the Old Man's cane hit his face.

Judy Byington

#37. It's not so much that I write well, I just don't write badly very often and that passes for good on television.

Andy Rooney

#38. Heresy is usually quite sophisticated, actually has a meaning, and is to be taken very seriously. It is therefore to be carefully distinguished from turgid, pretentious, badly-written Bullsgeshichte, to use the technical German theological term.

Carl R. Trueman

#39. Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#40. Your narrative may fail to grip if you haven't taken any care to find out how well or badly your audience member is faring (or feeling).

Christopher Hitchens

#41. When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

Gerald Brenan

#42. I do apologize for writing by hand - and so badly. I shall soon be like Helen Thomas, notoriously illegible. In her last letter only two words stood out plain: 'Blood pressure.' Subsequent research demonstrated that what she had actually written was 'Beloved friends.

Sylvia Townsend Warner

#43. You can only write regularly if you're willing to write badly. You can't write regularly and well. One should accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.

Jennifer Egan

#44. If you want it badly enough, it's yours.

Gina Greenlee

#45. You see, writing and talking breathlessly about how technology changes everything might seem harmless, but, in practice, it acts as a distraction from more mundane issues - and an excuse for handling those issues badly.

David Sax

#46. You'll be amazed how much you have in common with Edith Wharton (who struggled to feel worthy of success), Louisa May Alcott (who badly needed money), Madaleine L'Engle (who could have papered an entire house with her rejection letters) and other writers...

Nava Atlas

#47. Critics don't bother me because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it. And if I'm good, I know I'm good. I know best about myself, so a critic doesn't anger me.

Frank Sinatra

#48. The primary benefit of practicing any art, whether well or badly, is that it enables one's soul to grow.

Kurt Vonnegut

#49. 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

#50. I suppose that saves us from having to determine what to do with a butler who goes around killing people. It certainly reflects badly upon our domestic staff. Still, I shall miss him. There was a man who knew how to brew a good cup of tea.

Gail Carriger

#51. I worry sometimes that I'm a bit moralistic; always writing about men who are learning to grow up, not be so self-absorbed, selfish or badly behaved. I wonder if that's dull and liberal and wimpy? I should probably write something that celebrates wickedness.

David Nicholls

#52. You've got to write badly. If you write badly at least you've got something to rewrite. If you're scared to write badly, then you've got nothing.

Tony Grisoni

#53. I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.

Francoise Sagan

#54. It's good to write badly. Things can only get better.

Alan Dapre

#55. It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing

Sol Stein

#56. I'm not a big fan of inspiration. I'm too old to sit and wait for the muse to give me a little kiss ... I write a lot, and I'm not afraid to make mistakes or to write badly. I can alsways fix something weak and dull. But I can't fix a blank page.

Ron Koertge

#57. I always say writing fiction isn't something you teach. It's something you do, and only experimentation - i.e. doing it, either badly or good sometimes - can help anybody get any better or worse at it.

Peter Orner

#58. What could a person like Emily do? Could she possibly satisfy both sides? Or would that only end badly?

S.A. Tawks

#59. Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me
and treating me badly.

Jorge Luis Borges

#60. I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?

Ernest Hemingway,

#61. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sakes. Now, I mean, I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend
a lousy poem.

Kurt Vonnegut