Inspiration For Writers Quotes & Sayings

I believe the first draft of a book - even a long one - should take no more than three months ... Any longer and - for me, at least - the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave duiring a period of severe sunspot activity. — Stephen King

Novelty. Security. Novelty wouldn't be a bad title. It had the grandness of abstraction, alerting the reader that large and thoughtful things were to be bodied forth. As yet he had no inkling of any incidents or characters that might occupy his theme; perhaps he never would. He could see though the book itself, he could feel its closed heft and see it opened, white pages comfortably large and shadowed gray by print; dense, numbered, full of meat. He sensed a narrative voice, speaking calmly and precisely, with immense assurance building, building; a voice too far off for him to hear, but speaking. ("Novelty") — John Crowley

As if the night has been created for the writers and as if the silence of it is the very inspiration itself! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

One, don't wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it's going? — Roger Ebert

Certain kinds of people, and a fortiori certain kinds of writers, have always experienced the world around them in the Gothic manner, I'm almost positive. Perhaps there was even some little stump of an apeman who witnessed prehistoric lightning as it parried with prehistoric blackness in a night without rain, and felt his soul rise and fall at the same time to behold this sublime and terrifying conflict. Perhaps such displays provided inspiration for those very first imaginings that were not born of our daily life of crude survival, who knows? Could this be why all our primal mythologies are Gothic - that is, fearsome, fantastical, and inhuman? — Thomas Ligotti

The greatest writers are the ones not afraid to share their heartbreak and pain for the world to read.
They are fearless and freely in sharing their heart to heal other wounds with their story. — Tamyara Brown

Don't waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Not all writers are silently suffering inside. But it certainly helps. — Joyce Rachelle

It's our decisions, not our conditions, that ultimately shape the quality of our lives. — Derric Yuh Ndim

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

Stop waiting for creative inspiration. Start creating and inspire yourself along the way. — Ryan Lilly

Well, I definitely advise anyone who wants to write, write. Don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't. Because a lot of people can be very discouraging to people who say they want to be a professional writer. If you want to do it, then chase it. Chase your dreams. Follow your heart. If that's what you want, go after it. Write it out. You never know, you could be the next big thing. — Helena Lancaster

For instance, with "Ragtime" I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall. That's the kind of day we sometimes have, as writers. Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Braodviw Avenue looked like then: trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was president. One thing led to another and that's the way that book began: through desperation to those few images ... - 92nd Street YMHA Interview — E.L. Doctorow

When I reach for my pen, nothing is out of reach. — Rob Bignell, Editor

The difference between a fairly interesting writer and a fascinating writer is that the fascinating writer has a better nose for what genuinely excites him, he is hotter on the trail, he has a better instinct for what is truly alive in him. The worse writer may seem to be more sensible in many ways, but he is less sensible in this vital matter: he cannot distinguish what is full of life from what is only half full or empty of it. And so his writing is less alive, and as a writer he is less alive, and in writing, as in everything else, nothing matters but life. — Ted Hughes

How does Chekhov's artistic "programme" comment on the message of The Duel, and vice versa? I should like to be a free artist and nothing more, and I regret that God has not given me the power to be one. I hate lying and violence in all their forms ... Pharisaism, stupidity and despotism reign not in merchants' houses and prisons alone. I see them in science, in literature, in the younger generation ... That is why I have no preference either for gendarmes, or for butchers, or for scientists, or for writers, or for the younger generation. I regard trade-marks and labels as a superstition. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom - freedom from violence and lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the programme I would follow if I were a great artist.* — Anton Chekhov

I allude to Back to the Future in the 1985 story to let folks know it was an inspiration and because it literally was the most time-travelly bit of pop culture we had in the mid 80's. I can talk about their tools for considering change. First, the book is metafictive in a traditional sense where I'm showing and telling the reader that the act of writing and reading is a reflexive way to push boundaries of real and literal time travel. Writers and readers are time travellers. The question is what we do with that time we traveled when we leave a book, leave a page. — Kiese Laymon

The hours spent forming a written work can make one obsessive, distracted, compulsive, and neurotic even, especially when it comes to those rare, precious occasions of streaming pure inspiration. To have a muse moment interrupted - to watch her scuttle back into hiding with unshared insight remaining on the tip of her tongue - is a wicked irritation. When a writer's eyes glaze over, when she stares off at nothing or appears to be memorizing the lines on a blank page, when she falls asleep at the desk ... tiptoe softly. For a writer's greatest desire is to receive inspiration; her greatest nightmare, to have tossed to the wind what could've been captured in words. — Richelle E. Goodrich

GIVING - Applied tithing is so rewarding. When you give away your time, talent, and treasures you create a huge shift in your prosperity consciousness. So start where you are as you reach for where it is you want to be. — Lisa Washington

our value/belief system acts as a
conditioning factor for our thinking pattern. — Derric Yuh Ndim

We write because the blank piece of paper and the pen are there. We write because this is our addiction and we are proud of it. Our habit, our drug, our crutch. Whatever you wish to call it. We write because since an early age we felt it deep in our souls and in our bones. The poem must be written, the story must be told and the new myths and Gods are waiting for you to bring them forth from out of the darkness and to bring them into the light of being. You are a creator, so create. You are the writer. So write. — R.M. Engelhardt

I am indebted to the following colleagues for their advice, assistance, or support: Dr. Alfred Lerner, Dori Vakis, Robin Heck, Dr. Todd Dray, Dr. Robert Tull, and Dr. Sandy Chun. Thanks also to Lynette Parker of East San Jose Community Law Center for her advice about adoption procedures, and to Mr. Daoud Wahab for sharing his experiences in Afghanistan with me. I am grateful to my dear friend Tamim Ansary for his guidance and support and to the gang at the San Francisco Writers Workshop for their feedback and encouragement. I want to thank my father, my oldest friend and the inspiration for all that is noble in Baba; my mother who prayed for me and did nazr at every stage of this book's writing; my aunt for buying me books when I was young. Thanks go out to Ali, Sandy, Daoud — Khaled Hosseini

Many of us would not make terribly interesting characters in a novel. — Claire Wingfield

Being a writer all boils down to this: It's you, in a chair, staring at a page. And you're either going to stay in that chair until words are written, or you're going to give up and walk away. The great writers have to fight for their words. They have to choose to write, choose words over distractions, and their characters over their friends. Great writers can be lonely, exhausted souls. But through our characters, we live. — Alessandra Torre

when you are a child you unconsciously adopt certain beliefs. Yet, there comes
the necessity to upgrade these beliefs as you grow older. — Derric Yuh Ndim

Completing any writing project, particularly a novel, is a daunting prospect. Many people become frozen by the prospect. Others keep waiting for the right time. Some wait for the spark of inspiration. Even experienced writers find it is easier to do anything other than actually write. — Bob Mayer

I have suffered, like other writers, from indolence, irresolution, distaste to my work, absence of 'inspiration,' and all that: but I have also found that sitting down, however reluctantly, with the pen in my hand, I have never worked for one quarter of an hour without finding myself in full train ... — Harriet Martineau

Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God. — Thomas Paine

I'm a happy camper when I'm doing both: writing and art every day, along with a dose of reading and adventures into what else is being done by other artists/writers and poets. Like breathing. I've written poems or fictions to go with a painting. The source for the inspiration of the art often eludes me. — Marge Simon

Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond
that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write. — Tanith Lee

How you define an event produces emotion
and determines how you feel going forward — Derric Yuh Ndim

Every day you make certain decisions and take specific actions that come about as a result of how you think, feel and the habits you tend to indulge — Derric Yuh Ndim

People often ask writers where they get their inspiration, and for me, the short answer is that I haven't a clue; I'm just grateful that I get them. — Michelle Paver

There's a lot of "fiddle-faddle" wrapped up in that word "inspiration." It is the last resort of the lazy writer, of the man who would rather sit and dream than be up and doing. If the majority of writers who depend upon fiction for a livelihood were to wait for the spirit of inspiration to move them, the sheriff would happen along and tack a notice on the front door--while the writers were still waiting. — John Milton Edwards

It also seems that the unhappy writers are the enduring writer. Hampered or limited by their suffering, literature becomes their focus and salvation, forcing them to give their best every moment of creation. Writing becomes their medicine, their way of escape, the catalyst for their imagination. — Cirilo F. Bautista

In his earliest youth, he had drawn inspiration from really bad authors, as you may have seen from his style; as he grew older, he lost his taste for them, but the excellent authors just didn't fill him with the same enthusiasm — Gustave Flaubert

Our perceptions of reality are only a relationship to what is actually out there. Perceptions are influenced by context, by previous life experience, and by our tendency to seek out
evidence to confirm our expectations. This drive to confirm, as
argued by social physiologists, results in what is known as self fulfilling prophecy. — Derric Yuh Ndim

Writing has nothing to do with pretty manners, and less to do with sportsmanship or restraint [...]
Every writer begins as a subversive, if in nothing more than the antisocial means by which he earns his keep. Finally, every fantasist who cannibalizes himself knows that misfortune is his friend, that grief feeds and sharpens his fancy, that hatred is as sufficient a spur to creation as love (and a world more common) and that without an instinct for lunacy he will come to nothing. — Geoffrey Wolff

Folding the laundry, completing another project at work, or watching television for the next hour doesn't build your writing muscles. It only leaves them flabby. — Rob Bignell, Editor

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

People often ask where I get my ideas from, sometimes as often as eighty-seven times a day. This is a well-known hazard for writers, and the correct response to the question is first to breathe deeply, steady your heartbeat, fill your mind with peaceful, calming images of birdsong and buttercups in spring meadows, and then try to say, "It's very interesting you ask that ... " before breaking down and start to whimper uncontrollably. — Douglas Adams

Material poverty doesn't cause
murder, rape or terror.Mental poverty does. — Derric Yuh Ndim

Even if you're in the thick of revising another work, write something new. Something small. It's important to keep telling yourself stories. — Don Roff

You cannot keep something down that is bound to rise. — Juliet C. Obodo

A novelist is similar to a triathlete. Train hard every day. You will be timed and measured. Budget to promote, grow, and be without fear. — Caroline Gerardo

Make today the day you begin that awesome idea you have had for years. Now go, write this book, and remember that today is an important day in history. — M. Kirin

Why do we write?
"To make suffering endurable
To make evil intelligible
To make justice desirable
and . . . to make love possible — Roger Rosenblatt

A lot of young writers wait for inspiration. The inspiration only hits you at the desk. — Robert Anderson

I've always said "Writer's Block" is a myth. There is no such thing as writer's block, only writers trying to force something that isn't ready yet. Sometimes I don't write for weeks. And then all of the sudden I'll get a rush of inspiration and you can't drag me away from my notebook. But I don't stress out if I don't hit some arbitrary word count each day or if I go a few days without writing something. — Julie Ann Dawson

A writer of any merit does not worry about being accepted everywhere. He must write to inspire, to change for the better or to challenge the status quo! — Avijeet Das

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg. — J.K. Rowling

Three words for a writer: Make me care. — Buffy Andrews

Inspiration for what we produce comes from reading, observing the world of humans around us and also the animal kingdom — Walt Disney Company

I've always felt a vague sense of guilt that I search for plunder and inspiration in every book or poem or story I pick up. Other people's books are treasures when stories emerge in molten ingots that a writer can shape to fit his or her own talents. Magical theft has always played an important part of my own writer's imagination. — Pat Conroy

Every now and then, I need a little spark of inspiration. It could be from reading (a novel, poetry, story, news article, a blog) or it could be attending an event (play, musical performance, poetry reading, writers conference). Something to wake up the drowsy Artist that lives within. For the past seven months, I have done all of these things and I noticed that my Artist has been up writing articles, a children's story, and most recently, working on new poems. After several years of hibernation, it is good to see my Artist so active. I must continue to give her a jolt to inspire her to do much more. — Sandra Proto