Quotes & Sayings About Writing Often

When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them. — Pat Metheny

It's often women who are writing leading roles for women. Most of the stuff that comes my way is not actually about women. I'm just asked to be a supporting player in a story about a man, and I, frankly, was not interested in doing that. — Carrie Coon

I've been writing about Vermont independence for nearly ten years ... and, more often than not, it was for an audience of one. — Thomas Naylor

I often reread passages of "Lolita" for its exquisite language. To me, "Lolita" has no message, no purpose, other than to exist as a marvel of literary creation. It has wit, intelligence and style. It pointedly makes no attempt to serve a higher moral purpose, and previous attempts by critics to find one have proven ludicrous. The annotated edition is accompanied by a brilliant afterword by Nabokov that is a lucid reminder of the pure joy of writing, its interplay with life. — Amy Tan

I think I've been very lucky. The readers who write to me say they like the characters and the sense of a real world, often one they don't otherwise know about. And usually there's a funny bit in there somewhere. — Sophie Weston

The "executive producer" title either means that you're the person who created, or co-created, the show, or you're the person who's in charge of day-to-day operations. Whereas "producer" is often just a writing credit. — Mitchell Hurwitz

To sit down so often with nothing to say,-to say something so often, almost without consciousness of saying and without any remembrance or having said,-is a power of which I will not violate my modesty by boasting; but I do not believe everyone has it. — Michael Kelahan

Identifying Your Dream
Some people can easily identify one primary dream. For others, a dream is more elusive. These people often have many dreams at once, or a general idea of a dream that never takes a specific shape. — SARK

Gardening is really an extended form of reading, of history and philosophy. The garden itself has become like writing a book. I walk around and walk around. Apparently people often see me standing there and they wave to me and I don't see them because I am reading the landscape. — Jamaica Kincaid

Reading is like breathing in and writing is like breathing out, and storytelling is what links both: it is the soul of literacy. The most powerful tool that we have to strengthen literacy is often the most underused and overlooked, and that is a child's own stories. — Pam Allyn

My writing process often begins with a question. I write down ideas and let them stew for about a year. Then, when I sit down to write, I make a list of characters and try to see how they fit. — Cynthia Voigt

The problem with being an author in this modern world is such: computers break often; books don't — Emma Iadanza

Get an agent. Seriously, submitting stuff unagented means it will end up on the slush pile. An agent is the first quality filter, and a good agent is worth his or her weight in gold, as they'll often know the editors on a personal level and will be able to talk to them directly about the project. — Tim Lebbon

Writing often in the pages of the New York Times, Allison Arieff is a powerful spokesperson. "Bring back the sidewalk!" she urged in one of her articles, explaining: "Community is born from social routine - running into neighbors at the mailbox or while walking down the street. Design for these serendipitous encounters."8 — Bella DePaulo

Suppose that a person writes what she must. That is only the first step of becoming a writer. The work must survive the moment of creation. It must get out to an audience. She or he must dare to show the work. She must risk ridicule, misunderstanding, scandal, condemnation, & what's often worse, none of the above: silence. No attention at all. — Marge Piercy

In undergraduate classes, I often see writers who are still simply imitating. I mean, we all imitate - that's how we learn to speak or write in the first place - but they're writing a Dean Koontz novel or something. — Leni Zumas

It was then that I began to write. Writing helps when you can't talk to your friends; it wasn't that my friends were untrustworthy, it's just that I would never discuss something that was hardly real as though it were really real. Often people do this, forcing friends into authenticating an imaginary life. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

Men have external genitalia, while women have internal genitalia. This simple difference makes a lot of difference in how they write about themselves - and how you might write about your characters. Male writers don't often address internal sensation in a character, because they don't experience it (and probably often don't realize consciously that it's there). This accounts for a lot of Really Terrible sex scenes written by men (if you look at the "Bad Sex-Scene Awards" in any given year, you'll see that the vast majority are done by male writers). — Diana Gabaldon

There are certain topicks which are never exhausted. Of some images and sentiments the mind of man may be said to be enamoured; it meets them, however often they occur, with the same ardour which a lover feels at the sight of his mistress, and parts from them with the same regret when they can no longer be enjoyed. — Samuel Johnson

I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. — Terry Tempest Williams

Sometimes it's hard to know when you've crossed the line from conscientious to compulsive. When you're in the thick of an assignment, it's easy to believe that you must spend so much time brainstorming, researching, writing, testing, revising or what-have-you. Often, it's only after you've been working for hours on end that you realize that half the work you've been doing wasn't actually necessary and that you've just wasted a lot of time. — Michael Law

I often will write a scene from three different points of view to find out which has the most tension and which way I'm able to conceal the information I'm trying to conceal. And that is, at the end of the day, what writing suspense is all about. — Dan Brown

Often turn the stile [correct with care], if you expect to write anything worthy of being read twice.
[Lat., Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint Scripturus.] — Horace

She wasn't all that interested, as a reader, in the reader. She was still partial to that increasingly eclipsed entity: the writer. Madeleine had a feeling that most semiotic theorists had been unpopular as children, often bullied or overlooked, and so had directed their lingering rage onto literature. They wanted to demote the author. They wanted a book, that hard-won, transcendent thing, to be a text, contingent, indeterminate, and open for suggestions. They wanted the reader to be the main thing. Because they were readers.
Whereas Madeleine was perfectly happy with the idea of genius. She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself. She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I get very selfish at times. I write about things that are interesting to me. Which are often very different. All of these stories, the thing they have in common is that they were somehow interesting. I feel like they're all dispatches from a worldview. — Wright Thompson

It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer - committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear. — George Eliot

In TIME June 7, 2010
On the sustainability of the publishing industry, in the Chicago Tribune:
"I think that book publishing is about to slide into the sea. We live in a literate time, and our children are writing up a storm, often combining letters and numbers ... The future of publishing: 18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $175." - 5/26/10 — Garrison Keillor

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system. — Flannery O'Connor

I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing. — Natalie Goldberg

You should live in a manner that should enable you to devote time to writing and contemplation. As is often said, the writer is at work even when he is simply looking out the window. — F. Sionil Jose

In a sense, this book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know. Yes, these events are true, yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else, and I often felt like a curious onlooker or someone trying to remember a dream. I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now, having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth. One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years. — Steve Martin

Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud? — Haruki Murakami

My writing tools were my most precious belongings. My best quill pen was made from a raven's feather ... I was often so poor that I could not pay my mantua-maker, but I always invested in the best ink and parchment. I smoothed it with pumice stone till it was as white and fine as my own skin, ready to absorb the rapid scratching of my quill — Kate Forsyth

In this couple defects were multiplied, as if by a dangerous doubling; weakness fed upon itself without a counterstrength and they were trapped, defaults, mutually committed, left holes everywhere in their lives. When you read their letters to each other it is often necessary to consult the signature in order to be sure which one has done the writing. Their tone about themselves, their mood, is the fatal one of nostalgia
a passive, consuming, repetitive poetry. Sometimes one feels even its most felicitious and melodious moments are fixed, rigid in experession, and that their feelings have gradually merged with their manner, fallen under the domination of style. Even in their suffering, so deep and beyond relief, their tonal memory controls the words, shaping them into the Fitzgerald tune, always so regretful, regressive, and touched with a careful felicity. — Elizabeth Hardwick

Writing again, he stressed that the events of war are always uncertain. Then, paraphrasing a favorite line from the popular play Cato by Joseph Addison - a line that General Washington, too, would often call upon - Adams told her, We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it. — David McCullough

People often say that writing is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration. This is nonsense, of course. It's pretty much one hundred percent caffeine. — Caprice Crane

I am often told that the model of balance for the novelist should be Dante, who divided his territory up pretty evenly between hell, purgatory, and paradise. There can be no objection to this, but also there can be no reason to assume that the result of doing it in these times will give us the balanced picture it gave in Dante's. Dante lived in the thirteenth century, when that balance was achieved by the faith of his age. We live now in an age which doubts both fact and value, which is swept this way and that by momentary convictions. Instead of reflecting a balance from the world around him, the novelist now has to achieve one from a felt balance inside himself. — Flannery O'Connor

Smart people often talk trash about happiness and worse than trash about books on happiness, and they have been doing so for centuries - just as long as other people have been pursuing happiness and writing books about it. — Amy Bloom

Humorous writing is often thought of as substandard in comparison to work with a more dramatic or tragic intent. I don't know what to say to this except that I disagree wholeheartedly. — Patrick DeWitt

Apollo without Dionysus may indeed be a well-informed, good citizen but he's a dull fellow. He may even be 'cultured,' in the sense one often gets from traditionalist writings in education ... But without Dionysus he will never make and remake a culture. — Jerome Bruner

Often it doesn't occur to you what kind of novel you're writing until quite late on. — Martin Amis

After a lifetime of hounding authors for advice, I've heard three truths from every mouth: (1) Writing is painful
it's 'fun' only for novices, the very young, and hacks; (2) other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision; (3) the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age, which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality. — Mary Karr

For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don't let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental when they can be, which translates as, on the whole, lenient, there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn't be doing one's job if one didn't itch to prick. — Christopher Hitchens

And then, once you've written, you meet producers and directors and actors. You get to meet interesting, talented, creative, artistic people, and it also staves off a bit of creative stagnation when you can't act, which is the reality of the industry. So often, you can't act because there are just too many cars and not enough car parks. But, I love writing and I'll never stop doing that. — Josh Lawson

That's why you have to write your book right now, if that's what you want to do. If you wait until you have the time, and the security, you might not want to do it. You're in a race against your own enthusiasm. Don't put it off because someone told you it's never too late. That's the worst lie. It's never too late today, but it's often too late tomorrow. — Stephen Elliott

Westerns have often been considered the ugly stepchild of genre writing... — Johnny D. Boggs

Writing for young children I find I often use particular jokes with words and exaggerated, funny events, but some of these haunt the more complex stories for older children too. — Margaret Mahy

I think that 'Floor Sample' is a story of resiliency, a lifelong spiritual search, and a lifelong sense of spiritual companionship that is most often expressed as creativity. My desire in writing the book was to step from behind the icon of 'Julia the teacher' and introduce 'Julia the artist.' — Julia Cameron

Writers should find out where joy resides and give it a voice. Every bright word or picture is a piece of pleasure set afloat. The reader catches it, and he goes on his way rejoicing. It's the business of art to send him that way as often as possible. — Nancy Horan

The ancient Hebrews did not write the name of God. I often wish the Christians would follow suit, as never was a word more misused in writing and speaking than the name of the Lord. — Dagobert D. Runes

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions. — Susan Cain

I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them. — Tess Gerritsen

And I say,
I crash in to things in the dark
Even when the lights are on
And I am wrong more often than I am writing
And even then, I am often wrong
But when my friends are in the bathroom at the bar
Rolling dollar bills in to telescopes,
Claiming they can see God,
I will come to you — Andrea Gibson

Our most basic instinct is not for survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family for granted. — Paul Pearsall

Truth is often better seized and louder in the silence of the written word. — Ina Catrinescu

I don't spend as much time drawing as I do writing and reading. That's the really work-intensive part. And by the time I have enough material, it's often way past due time to put the comic up, and I'm already behind schedule, and I have to kind of rush it. — Kate Beaton

American writers often say they find it difficult to write Superman. They say he's too powerful; you can't give him problems. But Superman is a metaphor. For me, Superman has the same problems we do, but on a Paul Bunyan scale. If Superman walks the dog, he walks it around the asteroid belt because it can fly in space. When Superman's relatives visit, they come from the 31st century and bring some hellish monster conqueror from the future. But it's still a story about your relatives visiting. — Grant Morrison

Step by step, you make your way forward. That's why practices such as daily writing exercises or keeping a daily blog can be so helpful. You see yourself do the work, which shows you that you can do the work. Progress is reassuring and inspiring; panic and then despair set in when you find yourself getting nothing done day after day. One of the painful ironies of work life is that the anxiety of procrastination often makes people even less likely to buckle down in the future. — Gretchen Rubin

On the contrary, anyone speaking or writing about concentration camps is still regarded as suspect; and if the speaker has resolutely returned to the world of the living, he himself is often assailed by doubts with regard to his own truthfulness, as though he had mistaken a nightmare for reality. — Hannah Arendt

When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better. — Coco J. Ginger

Writers are often given the gift of being spectacularly unhappy, so that they can record the full depth of feeling. — Grace Bridges

With fiction, I tend to get to my desk and start writing. Poetry I write in my head, often while walking, so that my poems have an organic quality, hopefully. — John Burnside

I often write from memory by walking around and talking to myself. Even when I'm working at a computer I write out loud, so that I can hear the poem's rhythm. — James Arthur

When I'm playing with circular saws, I'm offline (though often listening to podcasts) and when I sit in the cabin to read or write, it's wonderful to be offline for a few hours at a time. — Ethan Zuckerman

Finally I had made that necessary imaginative leap - which is a real necessity, since most of us writers can't be out there living like crazy all the time. These days, very few are the writers whose book jackets list things like bush pilot, big game hunter, or exotic dancer. No, more often we are English teachers. We have children, we have mortgages, we have bills to pay. So we have to stop writing strictly about what we know, which is what they always told us to do in creative writing classes. Instead, we have to write about what we can learn, and what we can imagine, and thus we come to experience that great pleasure Anne Tyler noted when somebody asked her why she writes, and she answered, I write because I want more than one life. — Lee Smith

Critics can say what they like about the films, but very often, there's a certain expectation of documentaries that they're supposed to be like PowerPoint presentations. I see documentaries as movies. So when I see some critics writing that we could have done without the recreations altogether - well, perhaps. — Alex Gibney

My life often feels like a whirling dervish of kids, writing, speaking, and pastoral ministry. — Kevin DeYoung

As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer. But — J.R.R. Tolkien

Every day is a writing day. I get to my desk between 8 and 8:30 in the morning and then work through until 6pm, and then normally I'll take up whatever will be happening in the evening, usually painting or photography.
I do about four drafts total. I do handwritten drafts because I don't type and I have no wish to type. I mean, I know how to type, but I have no interest in putting the words down that way.
Maybe that's because I'm an artist and because I've always used a pen and so there's a sort of natural feel to it.
I don't know how familiar you are with Blake's illuminated texts, but you know very often he'll literally make words flower. It's really this glorious thing in bringing words and pictures into the same place, the same space. — Clive Barker

In some organizations, they can succeed if they are simply good at making presentations to the board of directors or writing strategies or plans. The tragedy is that these talents mask real deficiencies in overall management capabilities. These talented performers run for cover when grubby operating decisions must be made and often fail miserably when they are charged with earning a profit, getting things done and moving an organization forward. — Tom Peters

It is a curiosity of writing about angels that, very often, one turns out to be writing about men. — Donald Barthelme

The human authors and editors of the Old Testament brought their own experiences and presuppositions to the task of writing. We don't often think about this when we read the Bible. — Adam Hamilton

I have experienced bad dating and ineptitude with women all across the globe, from Vietnam to Paris. When I was 21, women were an enigma; they were this code that had to be cracked. They were 'The Other.' I have often thought writing this stuff into stand-up and shows would be an exorcism, but it hasn't been; it makes no difference. — Stephen Merchant

The advantage of writing from experience is that it often provides you with details that you would never think of yourself, no matter how rich your imagination. And specificity in description is something every writer should strive for. — Christopher Paolini

Sometimes you make a mistake, taking the wrong poem more often I make the mistake, writing it. — Charles Bukowski

(on teaching writing)
So many writers come to class with one question dominant in their mind, 'How do I make a living from this?' It's a fair enough question and one I always try to answer well - but it saddens me that it so often overshadows the more relevant questions of 'why am I writing' and 'what am I saying' and 'how do I keep it honest. — Celine Kiernan

I often attribute my screenwriting to journalism because they drill in the who, what, when, where and why - but we really need to land on that why. That's what I've been exploring in my writing for many years and trying to get better at. — Mara Brock Akil

I've done that quite often, but I've got to be quite honest ... as much as you would want to only do one at a time, sometimes projects overlap and there's nothing you can do. Sometimes you to have begin writing a new project just as you're finishing off another. — Trevor Rabin

So often, environmentalists and others working to slow the destruction are capable of plainly describing the problems (Who wouldn't be? The problems are neither subtle nor cognitively challenging), yet when faced with the emotionally daunting task of fashioning a response to these clear and clearly insoluble problems, we generally suffer a failure of nerve and imagination. Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler asking him to stop committing atrocities, and was mystified that it didn't work. I continue to write letters to the editor pointing out untruths, and continue to be surprised each time the newspaper publishes its next absurdity. At least I've stopped writing to politicians. — Derrick Jensen

I think writing a poem is like being a greyhound. Writing a novel is like being a mule. You go up one long row, then down another, and try not to look up too often to see how far you still have to go. — Ron Rash

There was no back home any more, not in the essential way, and that was part of Paris too. Why we couldn't stop drinking or talking or kissing the wrong people no matter what it ruined. Some of us had looked into the faces of the dead and tried not to remember anything in particular. Ernest was one of these. He often said he'd died in the war, just for a moment; that his soul had left his body like a silk handkerchief, slipping out and levitating over his chest. It had returned without being called back, and I often wondered if writing for him was a way of knowing his soul was there after all, back in its place. Of saying to himself, if not to anyone else, that he had seen what he'd seen and felt those terrible things and lived anyway. That he had died but wasn't dead any more. — Paula McLain

I make up names for people all the time - it's part of writing. Very often, the name comes with the character, along with of a sense of who they are and what they do. — Nick Harkaway

There is some reason to believe that when a man does not write his poetry it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was - and am - innocent. The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis — Ellen Bass

Authors always carry a means for scribbling and an excuse for pausing, often inopportunely, to record those fleeting sparks of creative fancy that might otherwise vanish like a wisp in the wind if ignored. Writing is a jealous and needy lover. — Richelle E. Goodrich

When you're all alone out there, on the end of the typewriter, with each new story a new appraisal by the world of whether you can still get it up or not, arrogance and self-esteem and deep breathing are all you have. It often looks like egomania. I assure you it's the bold coverup of the absolutely terrified. — Harlan Ellison

For not even one person to have ever exhibited this interest in writing nor for any to have so satisfied it is bizarre. Saying this all went on in person is simply insufficient to answer the point: if everything was being resolved in person, Paul would never have written a single letter; nor would his congregations have so often written him letters requesting he write to satisfy their questions - which for some reason always concerned only doctrine and rules of conduct, never the far more interesting subject of how the Son of God lived and died. On the other matters Paul was compelled to write tens of thousands of words. If he had to write so much on those issues, how is it possible no one ever asked for or wrote even one word on the more obvious and burning issues of the facts of Jesus' life and death? — Richard Carrier

I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources. — Thomas Mallon

Students are often taught when to use a particular method and how to use it, but not how to effectively write up their research plan and then later their research results. — Patricia Leavy

In writing advertising it must always be kept in mind that the customer often knows more about the goods than the advertising writers because they have had experience in buying them ... — John Wanamaker

The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service. — Laura Riding

For my writing, and because I love talking to young women about life, I often asked them which would they rather have - a father in the house with them while growing up or a big butt? I tell you 86 percent of the time, girls say a big butt because it gets them further. — Jill Scott

Journaling is the single most effective tool you may ever find for deeper intimacy with Father God and Jesus. It is a heart-to-heart method of communication with God. For you see, it is God's desire to intimately commune with you and to have you intimately commune with Him. Journaling facilitates this heart-to-heart communion - it is simply listening to each other's heart and writing it down.
Journaling helps you hear God's voice. God is speaking to you most of the time. Often you do not differentiate His voice from your own thoughts and therefore do not realize you are actually hearing God's voice. If you can learn to clearly discern His voice speaking within you, you have found the font of intimacy - the heart of God speaking to you. — Linda Boone

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

Writing is an act of empathy. You are occupying and understanding a point of view that might be alien to your own
and work is often the keyhole through which you peer. — Benjamin Percy

Writing has often been accompanied by terror, silences, and then wild bursts of private laughter that suddenly make all the dread seem worthwhile. — Erica Jong

I won't say that writing tamed the Black Beast. It soothed him, though, enough so he agreed simply to occupy a corner of my mind ... Gradually, I redirected my focus and skills towards causes much closer to my own heart: writing and mental health advocacy.
[ ... ]
I felt so good at times that I even wondered, was I still bipolar? In my community work, I saw so many people who were much worse off than I was - deep in their disease in a way I no longer seemed to be. I knew that this often happens to manic-depressives: the brain forgets the ravages of the illness they way a woman forgets the pains of childbirth. You have to, to survive. But it's always a dangerous place to be, because you inevitably start to question the need for medication, therapy, and all the other rigorous stopgaps of sanity so carefully put into place to prevent another episode. — Terri Cheney

Ultimately, the first, best step in getting your work noticed is to write good work. If people don't engage in your writing, no amount of serialization or free downloads is going to matter. You have to write something worth reading, and often it takes time to get at that level. — John Scalzi

Inspiration does not always precede the act of writing; it often follows it. — Madeleine L'Engle