Musings of a Chocoholic Romance Author: The Joys of Writing

Friday, January 05, 2007

The Joys of Writing

Writing is like breathing for me: I can't live without breathing, and I can't live without writing.

I love perusing through websites dedicated to quotes about writing. Today I'm looking at THIS ONE, and I thought I'd share the ones that stand out to me.

It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.Will Shetterly

There is no great writing, only great rewriting.
Justice Brandeis

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.
Louise Brooks

It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly. C. J. Cherryh

It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.
Ernest Hemingway

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?Stephen King

By writing much, one learns to write well.
Robert Southey

The only way to learn to write is to write.
Peggy Teeters

It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn't advance the story.
Frank Yerby

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Quotes About Writing

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word. ~Catherine Drinker Bowen

Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing. ~Melinda Haynes

My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly. ~John D. MacDonald

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else. ~Gloria Steinem

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. ~Thomas Mann

Easy reading is damned hard writing. ~Anonymous

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to. ~Somerset Maugham

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. ~E. L. Doctorow

The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing. ~Ken MacLeod\

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. ~Robert A. Heinlein

Never throw up on an editor. ~Ellen Datlow

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write. ~Stephen King

There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they're not useful. But always know what you're throwing away. ~Will Shetterly

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned. ~Oscar Wilde

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. ~Jack London

If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter. ~Anonymous

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. ~Ernest Hemingway

You never learn how to write a novel. You just learn how to write the novel that you're writing. ~Gene Wolfe