(Some words of wisdom – or not – about writing.)

“I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer.”
(The Beatles, ‘Paperback Writer’)

“If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.”
(Stephen King, ‘On Writing’)

“Who woulda guessed reading and writing would pay off?”
(The Simpsons)

“A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
(Thomas Mann)

“I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.”
(Anonymous)

“Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. But not necessarily in that order.”
(Robert Silverberg)

“What you need to write a novel, of course, is a deadline.”
(Chris Baty, ‘No Plot? No Problem!’)

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
(Jack London)

“What do you plan to do with all your stories?”
(Tori Amos, ‘Scarlet’s Walk’)

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
(Vladimir Nabokov)

“There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.”
(W Somerset Maugham)

“Don’t tell people you want to be a writer.”
(Meg Cabot)

“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.”
(Peter De Vries)

“… it’s the writing that’s hard, not the invention.”
(Nick Hornby)

“The first thing you should do is put it in a drawer for a month, then come back to it and read it again. It should make you cringe in parts. If it doesn’t, leave it in the drawer for another month. When you read it with both love and disdain, you’re ready to revise. Work on your revision. THEN you can send it out.”
(Libba Bray)

“I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank page.”
(Nora Roberts)

“Writing is about energy, about perfect imperfection, about humanity.”
(Julia Cameron, ‘The Right To Write’)

“A love story can never be about full possession. The happy marriage, the requited love, the desire that never dims – these are lucky eventualities but they aren’t love stories. Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name.”
(Jeffrey Eugenides, introduction to ‘My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead’)

“Writing is something more comfortable than not writing.”
(Julia Cameron, ‘The Right To Write’)

“Writing is always a challenge, but a female voice isn’t especially difficult for me. A long time ago a woman told me that to write from a woman’s perspective you should just have her think and do everything a man does, while being self-conscious about her body the entire time.”
(Daniel Handler)

“If you can create a whole world on paper, you can certainly cajole yourself into a bit of writing.”
(Sarah Webb)

“We always do the best we can by the light we have to see by.”
(Julia Cameron, ‘The Artist’s Way’)