Writer S Block Quotes

“Writing 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, Ragtime

“A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two.”
― Frank Herbert

“The only reason you can't write is because you don't.”
― AA Patawaran, Write Here Write Now: Standing at Attention Before My Imaginary Style Dictator

“Writer's block comes from the feeling that one is doing the
wrong thing or doing the right thing badly. Fiction written for
the wrong reason may fail to satisfy the motive behind it and
thus may block the writer, as I've said; but there is no wrong
motive for writing fiction. At least in some instances, good
fiction has come from the writer's wish to be loved, his wish
to take revenge, his wish to work out his psychological woes,
his wish for money, and so on. No motive is too low for art;
finally it's the art, not the motive, that we judge.”
― John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

“Unfortunately, many people suffer from BPS - Blank Page Syndrome. Let's face it: starting to write is scary. Seeing the cursor blinking at you on that bright white screen, realizing that you now have to come up with three or ten or twenty pages of text all on your own - it's enough to give anyone a major case of writer's block!”
― Stefanie Weisman, The Secrets of Top Students: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Acing High School and College

“My imagination was running amok again. Twice in one night. This never happens when I’m sitting in front of a typewriter.”
― Gary Reilly, Ticket To Hollywood

“Part of the writer's problem may be thee wrong kind of appreciation: hen he does work he knows to be less than he's capable of, his friends praise precisely those things he knows to be weak or meretricious. The writer who cannot write because nothing he writes is good enough, by his own standards, and because no one around him seems to share his standards, is in a special sort of bind:
the love of good fiction that gets him started in the first place makes him scornful of the flawed writing he does (nearly all first-draft writing is flawed) and his sense that nobody cares about truly good fiction robs him of motivation.”
― John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

“The best way in the world for breaking up a writer's block is to write a lot.”
― John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

“I still get plenty anxious. The weird thing, and the unpleasant surprise for me, of proceeding well into the middle, perhaps even post-prime of my career is that writing books has not got any easier. And that doesn't seem fair. I mean, I've been doing it so surely I should be getting better at it, at least a little bit blasé... And it seems to be working absolutely the opposite. This book [Big Brother] I had no confidence in the entirety of its composition, and I only decided I liked it when I finished the very final draft. This means I'm in a state of semi-misery for a long time. And I can't blithely seem either that's some little game I'm playing with myself because, you know, you can easily come along and you don't like what's you're writing for good reason. Right? So, yeah, it's very anxious making, I don't think it's so much the becoming a little more successful, I think it's becoming slightly more aware of how much has already been written, and just becoming less self-impressed as the years go by. More impressed with some people who are better than I am, but... It doesn't wow me that I can write a sentence any more. It has to be a really good sentence. And... I think that's what potentially leads to paralysis in late career, is a kind of killing humility.


Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC, on June 11, 2013”
― Lionel Shriver

“She looked at the empty page, which remained blank, apart from the small wet dots from her tears, for hours. Her mind was a turmoil of sadness, rage, fear and all those emotions that gave her inspiration. However her heart lacked the will as the empty words enclosed her soul pulling it down towards the frenzied ravenous imps that stalked hells pantry....”
― Virginia Alison

“I tell him getting stuck is the commonest trouble of all. Usually, I say, your mind gets stuck when you're trying to do too many things at once. What you have to do is try not to force words to com. That just gets you more stuck. What you have to do now is separate out the things and do them one at a time. You're trying to think of what to say and what to say first at the same time and that's too hard. So separate them out. Just make a list of all the things you want to say in any old order. Then later we'll figure out the right order.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“Maybe the real problem wasn’t that she had nothing to write about, but that she had too much. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of her finiteness after all, but rather Infinity and how it called her to begin somewhere, anywhere. To begin might be an acceptance that indeed she was some kind of creator, with tremendous powers.

It might mean taking people’s lives into her hands–her own life, her friends’, even her father’s or mother’s. And maybe she was afraid they would think she had animated a wandering Frankenstein no one wanted to hold.”
― L.L. Barkat, The Novelist

“The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on. Given the general oddity of writers, no wonder there are no sure cures.”
― John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

“Sometimes ideas flow from my mind in a raging river of stringed sentences; I can scarcely scribble on the page fast enough to keep up with the mental current. Sometimes, however, beavers move in and dam the whole thing up.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich

“Sometimes when one cannot stand the story or novel one
is working on, it helps to write something else—a different
story or novel, or essays venting one's favorite peeves, or exercises
aimed at passing the time and incidentally polishing up
one's craft. The best way in the world for breaking a writer's
block is to write a lot. Jabbering away on paper, one gets
tricked into feeling interested, all at once, in something one is
saying, and behold, the magic waters are flowing again. Often
it helps to work on a journal, since that allows the writer to
write about those things that most interest him, yet frees him
of the pressure of achievement and encourages him to develop
a more natural, more personal style.”
― John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist

“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, On Becoming a Novelist

“I don't believe in writer's block. Writer's block is when you're running down an ally and all of a sudden you're trapped by a brick wall. You can't go under, over, or through it. You're stuck. But the problem isn't that you can't pass the brick wall. You see, the problem is that you went down the wrong ally.”
― Barry Lyga

“The gift of writing; natural flow of thoughts from the deepest heart.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“There is indeed one person who can help solve “writer’s block”. His name is Mr Johnnie Walker.”
― Ashwin Sanghi

“Time heals all wounds; some broken hearts -- and most cases of writer's block.”
― Quentin R. Bufogle

“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

“When I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. Filling pages and people with inspiration. When my thoughts don't want to rest on a page, we argue. We argue that one merely is ready just too comfortable playing in The Nile [denial] river. So we compromise. We grow,
water metaphors
and plant simile trees
of golden-almond
manifested love dreams.
Then at that moment, we forgot what we were arguing about.
Beauty can do that for you.
That's the beauty of writing.”
― Antonia Perdu

“Never fails. Every new book I write seems impossible, writes like I'm typing from dictation, edits like I didn't write it, and finishes like I couldn't possibly have written it.”
― Kris Rafferty

“No one will ever know what manifold difficulties I’ve had to overcome in order to bring to a conclusion this first part of my chronicle. In certain dreams you feel leaden, numb, paralyzed, incapable of moving even though frightful and ferocious enemies are closing in on you. A constraint, curb, impediment of this order were a constant obstacle to the, oh, so very long and arduous composition of this work. And yet with every one of these stories the fact of having committed it to writing relieved me of a genuine millstone. My only regret is not to have completely unburdened myself. I’m still sadly short of reaching that target.”
― Jacques Yonnet, Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City

“I don't get writers block. I get writer has too many ideas and doesn't know which one to start next, block.”
― Tyler Hojberg

“I don't believe in writer's block. If I can't write, I go out and live. Then, if I'm a writer, I'll find something to write.”
― Peter Arpesella

“The struggle for a life extracts all our attention, and leaves us blind, deaf, dumb and senseless. The writer, the artist, the musician vanishes, without even the charity of a proper cremation. At this point words become formless sounds, and thoughts run out of paper and jump out of the terra firma and fly in the air, forcing us to find someone to share them with, someone who could understand. The fear of wasting words is the worst kind of it, only a writer knows.”
― Anu Lal, Wall of Colours and Other Stories

“How do you paint a writer's block?
Just fill it with fifty shades of black.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes

“Jednog dana, pisac otkriva da nije više u stanju ništa da napiše. Šta god pokuša, kojim god putem krene, ne uspeva da stigne do celovite rečenice. U prvi mah, pisac se ne predaje i pokušava bezbroj puta da sastavi makar jednu prihvatljivu rečenicu, ali reči se odupiru, odbijaju da ga slušaju ili se uopšte ne odazivaju na njegove usplahirene pozive, i pisac polako popušta, diže ruke, pravi se da je nezainteresovan, nadajući se da će se reči prevariti i doći da vide šta je s njim, zašto ga nema. Ali reči su lukave, reči su prošle sito i rešeto i ne pada im na kraj pameti da se liše novostečene slobode. I dok one veselo trče i dobacuju se uskličnicima, pisac pomišlja da postane mimičar. Ali ni tamo ga ne primaju, odvratni su im onemeli pisci, i tako piscu ne preostaje ništa drugo nego da se zaposli u zoološkom vrtu. I eno, tamo je, hrani pingvine. (Pisac bez reči)”
― David Albahari, Male priče

“Writing is like knitting. Stitch after stitch, word by word, and before you know it you have a book ... or a jumper!”
― Fusty Luggs