Writing Challenges Quotes

#1. I don't want to write soft, easy fiction; I want to write fiction that challenges.

Brian A. McBride

#2. You're not being paid by how hard you work, but by what you accomplish. If you can't hack it, pack it. Our challenge today is to look forward, to write our own history.

William A. Connelly

#3. If you are not discouraged about your writing on a regular basis, you may not be trying hard enough. Any challenging pursuit will encounter frequent patches of frustration. Writing is nothing if not challenging.

Maxwell Perkins

#4. Poetry challenges you. Much of its importance is that it's one of the few places left in culture that makes things difficult-it asks you to think, to perceive and not to take for granted what we think about the world.

Dan Beachy-Quick

#5. For all its ups and downs and challenges, I love writing. We only grow through adversity, so I welcome the difficulties, knowing bumps in the road are my greatest teachers.

Lori Wilde

#6. I did not find that writing a diary with a lead male character differed in any essential way from writing one with a female character. They all had the same challenges in terms of attempting to establish an identity, coping with loneliness, friendships, relationships.

Kathryn Lasky

#7. I love writing. It's a fun challenge. It refuels me personally.

Trevor McNevan

#8. When a director writes, there's a compulsory arbitration. You have a right to challenge any of the arbitrators, but they pick three of four arbitrators who read all the drafts with no names attached and then allocate credit.

Harold Ramis

#9. It's surprising that readers don't see challenging writing as morally hazardous, when it might be pushing the same kinds of boundaries as art does.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

#10. As such, anything is always possible, even if your protagonist is a plumber. But it's the possibility, the limitless possibilities, of any fake life, that make writing about it so challenging.

Heidi Julavits

#11. I love writing about the military, as I live near an air force base and am inspired by the sacrifices our soldiers make for us. I like to give them a lot of challenges to beat, and show how they live with intrigue and danger.

Franny Armstrong

#12. I accept challenges, I have always done that in writing.

Jack Prelutsky

#13. Writing has been challenging at times but that's where all the growth is. I know I'm in the right place if it's difficult. Something a British writer said to me once was: "If the project doesn't make him wobble, he doesn't take it." You have to be uncomfortable to grow.

Geoff Thompson

#14. I am not one of those writers that it just flows out of effortlessly. I have to sit and write and rewrite and sometimes it's really challenging to get anything good out of myself.

Princess Superstar

#15. As a poet or a novelist or a painter, you are pushing yourself all the time, always looking for a new way to approach something, challenging yourself and never, never trying to write the same book twice.

Paul Auster

#16. I always say that if you're a novelist, the challenge is not writing what you think ought to happen, but trying in some way to write what did happen in a world that doesn't necessarily exist.

Neil Gaiman

#17. A good story is one liked. A great story is one that challenges thought, defiant and gets mouths talking.

Veronica Purcell

#18. Food is fun to write about because everybody has an opinion. Food is also fun to write about because it's a challenge. There are only so many ways to describe a plate of gnudi without resorting to "pillowy."

Lauren Collins

#19. Not everyone will like your writing or genre. You may face challenges that will slow you down. Don't let that stop you. The first person you need to believe in is you.

Kathy Porter

#20. Through my writing, I have made new friends and continued to learn about this world of ours in all its wonder, with all its challenges.

Sonia Levitin

#21. It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#22. When you're on the set, and sometimes, because it's been so complex and the writers have been really writing, sometimes up until the last minute and you kind of sit back; you separate yourself from your brain, and you say, let me see if you can do this. And that's the kind of challenge I like.

Glenn Close

#23. Structure is, for me, the most fun challenge about writing novels.

Heidi Julavits

#24. I love writing pop songs and I love the challenge. I love melodies and wanted it to be classy. I wanted it to have some substance because I feel as if I have a lot of things to say and wanted it to have something to it.

Courtney Jaye

#25. When I decided to stop using quotation marks, it presented technical challenges: you have to conceive of dialogue differently and structure it differently for this to work. So I had a new problem, which makes writing interesting again.

Catherine Brady

#26. Stop writing caption. Go action!

Lenang Manggala

#27. I like to challenge myself, to see if I can actually write a pop album that people can connect with lyrically. Musically, it's very accessible - or, at least, I hope so.

Chaz Bundick

#28. A story works when there's momentum, life behind the words. Some stories have this and others don't, and it's difficult to say why this is. If all stories "worked," though, writing wouldn't be much of a challenge; it wouldn't be art.

Mary J. Miller

#29. Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.

Edward Abbey

#30. Rock n roll is what I would die for, but I love music and I love exploring, taking the challenge of playing, writing or singing ... or producing.

Andrew Taylor

#31. I love writing both fiction and memoir. Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way.

Lisa Scottoline

#32. Everything is written in my mind, more so due to my lack of vision at this point. After years of vigorous writing, it was more of a challenge to do it without paper or sidekicks. I enjoy a good challenge.

Ab-Soul

#33. This one-way rocket to Death in Adulthood" "Normal Time" in New California Writing

Michael Chabon

#34. I enjoy writing the same way I enjoy doing standup. Part of the challenge is being creative and making it work no matter what the constraints.

Greg Fitzsimmons

#35. The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can.

Don Murray

#36. Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the whole world, and an entire sprawling industry, that writing monsters and demons and end-of-the-world is not hack-work, it can challenge the best. Joss Whedon raised the bar for every writer - not just genre/niche writers, but every single one of us.

Russell T. Davies

#37. Perhaps because the challenges we face in our country are so daunting, we are also tempted by shortcuts. We tell ourselves that if we invent a new acronym, or write a new empowerment charter, we can avoid some of the back-breaking work that sustained progress requires

Helen Zille

#38. If you play Mark Twain and he's not funny, you are definitely not playing Mark Twain. That was the biggest challenge, in some ways. Writing and performing jokes that can come out of that brilliant delivery system he constructed: the friendly, avuncular truth-teller.

Val Kilmer

#39. The books are like children in that having written one doesn't make writing the next one any easier, because it's a new set of problems and a new set of challenges with each one, and having dealt with one before means that you now know how to do it.

Dara Horn

#40. Our resources may be finite, but our will is infinite, and I am confident that if we come together and summon that great American spirit once again, we will meet the challenges of our time and write the next great chapter in our American story.

Barack Obama

#41. Writing a story no one else dares to say, sits outside my comfort zone, is one of the biggest challenges I'm facing as an author.

Veronica Purcell

#42. I never claimed to be a low-maintenance gal, but when I'm writing, it's particularly challenging. I lose things constantly: my watch, my glasses, my papers, my mind.

Rebecca Wells

#43. I've got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.

Louisa May Alcott

#44. For me, the challenge is just making great albums, because talent - and writing in general - is not tangible. There's no expiration date on it. At the same time, you might wake up tomorrow and be unable to write music.

Jay-Z

#45. The way I challenge myself is by writing something that really engages me, that doesn't have an easy answer, and isn't always an easy book to write.

Jodi Picoult

#46. The writing is always the easy part, provided I can get the good material. It's the getting of the good material that's a challenge.

Mary Roach

#47. We started writing the shows in order, and then very quickly had to jump to, "Oh, we got Tony Hale today and Jessica [Walter." We've got to jump ahead and write that stuff that's in Jessica's show. Fortunately, we knew the story, but it was challenging.

Mitchell Hurwitz

#48. The most enjoyable part in writing a series is being able to visit a world I have created and revisit old friends. The challenges are making the book fresh and new for readers who have started from the beginning while still adding old information for new readers.

Christine Feehan

#49. It's very hard to find good and wholesome, edifying and challenging writing for the students to perform. In my classroom I strive to do that as best as I can.

Patricia Mauceri

#50. I wasn't really writing anything that I felt was worth it at the end, but then certain things sparked me as a solo writer - to be able to try new things and experiment, and ultimately challenge myself as a performer and as a songwriter and just to commit to ideas, and not be afraid to be myself.

William Beckett

#51. This whole show vs tell concept both bewilders and challenges my mind.

Davee Jones

#52. It's easy to write something average or even something good. But writing well is quite challenging.

Nicholas Sparks

#53. I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.

James Thurber

#54. The challenge is always as a writer, is this going to work, because it's a very intimate process, and I tend to be very introverted and insular, and when I write, it's in my head.

Gloria Estefan

#55. I'd say it's never a challenge to present white and heteronormative privilege. The hard thing is to write any other way.

Nell Zink

#56. Writing is very difficult. You have 120 pages of blank paper and it's like, "Go fill that up with some funny stuff," and that's challenging.

Bobby Farrelly

#57. Being in the hearing world was more of a challenge than being in the Deaf world, because I had to learn how to write and communicate in a way that I hadn't experienced growing up.

Jack Jason

#58. Parallel Realities: While people sit in a coffee shop talking about their problems, challenges and struggles, I sit among them writing books with the solutions.

Robin Sacredfire