Writing Struggles Quotes & Sayings

I write things down because my thoughts get too heavy in my head and it hurts my neck. — Joyce Rachelle

The Four Stages of Writer's Block
W.B. Stage I: I want to write but I can't.
W.B. Stage II: I have to write but I can't.
W.B. Stage I: I don't want to write but I have to.
W.B. Stage I: I don't have time for writing ... and, honestly, I don't feel like writing. — Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Seekers are offered clues all the time from the world of spirit. Ordinary people call these clues coincidences — Deepak Chopra

Literary history and the present are dark with silences ... I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences
what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)
that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot. — Tillie Olsen

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. — George Orwell

A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries. — Tim O'Brien

I respect my limitations, but I don't use them as an excuse. — Stephen R. Donaldson

New York grew up before the automobile. And even though it's full of cars, its shape and form didn't get created around the automobile. — Paul Goldberger

[W]e wouldn't want to read a book about a perfect character who never struggles with character flaws, a difficult past, or interpersonal conflict. Writers can powerfully connect with readers when they venture to these thin places of pain and brokenness because readers can see themselves in the pain and want to journey from pain and struggle toward redemption or some kind of resolution. — Ed Cyzewski

What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people's stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves. — Tobias Wolff

Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.
Aristotle — Bruce Wayne Sullivan

Treat gain and loss the same.' Don't be Intimidated. Don't make a Big Deal of anything - just accept things as they come to you. — Benjamin Hoff

Mix me with violence, blend me with peace,
Combine me with hate, and I can't face defeat. — Puff Daddy

Teach your students real-world writing purposes, add a teacher who models his or her struggles with the writing process, throw in lots of real-world mentor texts for students to emulate, and give our kids the time necessary to enable them to stretch as writers. — Kelly Gallagher

Parallel Realities: While people sit in a coffee shop talking about their problems, challenges and struggles, I sit among them writing books with the solutions. — Robin Sacredfire

Like everyone else in this world, I have had struggles. There's disappointment and obstacles in everybody's life. I feel like I was writing 'Second Chance' not just for myself, but also for the people who have struggled. — El DeBarge

It's pretty intense writing about my own life, my own struggles. — Taylor Swift

I think expression is at it's best when it comes from an honest place, so I always try to use my own life experiences, feelings, struggles, frustrations etc. as the catalyst for my song writing. — Kate Brown

Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon ... is not the dragon the hero of his own story? — Erin Morgenstern

I've always felt very sympathetic from the first days of writing about women that, whatever the woman, whether she is trying to be a woman in the conventional sense or breaking the boundaries, those struggles are quite difficult. — Susie Orbach

Simply read a child's story that he or she is writing for school, and you will discover some of the inner struggles with which the young person is trying to cope. — John S. Savage

It has been a long road from Plato's Meno to the present, but it is perhaps encouraging that most of the progress along that road has been made since the turn of the twentieth century, and a large fraction of it since the midpoint of the century. Thought was still wholly intangible and ineffable until modern formal logic interpreted it as the manipulation of formal tokens. And it seemed still to inhabit mainly the heaven of Platonic ideals, or the equally obscure spaces of the human mind, until computers taught us how symbols could be processed by machines. — Allen Newell

From those who agonize that they may no longer be able to write off their private jet to someone who doesn't feel like making the three mile hike to the well to get water and carry it back, everyone struggles. — Henry Rollins

They always tell you to do what you love. But they forget to add that writing doesn't pay by the hour. — Joyce Rachelle

Lucien took the cigar and lit it, in the Spanish fashion, from that of the priest. "He is right," Lucien thought; "there is plenty of time to kill myself. — Honore De Balzac

If you'd like to meet some fully realized characters while learning some specifics of Zimbabwe's postcolonial struggles, as I did, you're likely to come away with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. If you're willing to settle for first-rate writing and provocative meditations on memory, corruption and loss, they are all here in abundance. — Jabari Asim

Define your path and travel on this path. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Every settlement with two shacks and a saloon gave itself a name: Helltown, Fair Play, Grizzly Flats, Piety Hill, Whiskey Flat, You Bet, Nary Red, Lousy Ravine, Petticoat Slide. — Donald Dale Jackson

Today's events are tomorrow's history, yet events seen by the naked eye lack the depth and breadth of human struggles, triumphs and suffering. Writing history is writing the soul of the past ... so that the present generation may learn from past mistakes, be inspired by their ancestor's sacrifices, and take responsibility for the future. — Epifanio De Los Santos

The personal eloquence of other people expressing aspects of nature and human condition inspire us, as do persons whom exhibit courage to gain strength when dealing with the hardships and struggles of a mortal life. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Mere Morality can be summarized as: using instinct, law, and reason as guides, try to act with the intention of minimizing harm. — Dan Barker

One of the most intriguing ideas in the developmental sciences over the past decades is the phenomenon of the "J-shaped curve."19 While observing children learning to master new skills in dozens of domains (math, writing, the arts), psychologists noticed a surprising pattern: as a learner struggles to master difficult new challenges, there is often an initial decline in skill. Errors are made on tasks that previously seemed easy, and the learner feels more "stupid" than ever before. This is the dip that forms the middle part of the "J." But it turns out that the "stupid mistakes," in retrospect, were nothing more than growth errors. Once the learner gets past the dip, performance rises rapidly to new heights. — William Damon

Not getting bored of my own story and/or character is one of the main struggles I have had with novel writing, and I have put to bed big chunks of work that just didn't sustain my interest. — Aimee Bender

The Mother of Sorrows is my confidante, my teacher, my counselor, and my powerful advocate. — Pio Of Pietrelcina

I think that I have grown a lot as an artist. I have been writing about my experiences of love and overcoming the struggles that I have faced in the music industry. I have so much more to tell my fans, and I know so much more about myself. It is crazy how much I have grown over these past years. — Jessica Sanchez

There are always struggles in writing. Anyone who denies this is either lying to themselves or you. Or they're not faithful to their audience. — Phoenix Elvis Nicholson

The silence stretched. Finally Al added one more sentence that I have been thinking about ever since. 'And if you did it again,' he said, 'we would have to kill you again.' We stared at each other for some time after that; each convinced, I am sure, that the other was a total idiot. — Dan Simmons

The Germans will be beaten in a few months. And Japan will be beaten a few months after that. If I were to give up my life now, it wouldn't be for my country. It would be for Cathcart and Korn. So I'm turning my bombsight in for the duration. From now on I'm thinking only of me. — Joseph Heller