45 Writing Quotes when You Need to Write but Can’t

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Have you ever been trying to write, but get stuck staring at a blank screen with the cursor blinking at you? We all have those days. Nothing some writing quotes can’t fix though!

And you’re in luck, because I found 45 of my favorites. All of the writing quotes are from professionals in the industry and are sure to pull you out of your funk! Maybe even help you find some inspiration, too. 😉

45 Writing Quotes when You Need to Write but Can’t:

• Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open. -Natalie Goldberg
• Read obsessively. Write Furiously. Edit carefully.- Sissy Gavrilaki
• Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.- EL Doctorow
• Sometimes it’s the princess who kills the dragon and saves the prince.- Samuel Lowe
• Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.- Cyril Connolly

• Writing: Somewhere between torture and fun. – Unknown
• Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.- Cory Doctorow
• To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself– Anne Rice
• When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.- Mark Twain
• We write down made-up stories to tell the truths we wish we could say out loud.- Unknown
• If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.- Margaret Atwood

• Writing is about letting go of the control and letting the characters tell the story.- Unknown
• Write hard and clear about what hurts.- Ernest Hemingway
• Be courageous and try to write in a way that scares you a little- Holly Gerth
• Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and the disturb the comfortable.- David Foster Wallace
• Don’t be afraid to write crap because crap makes great fertilizer. -Jessica Brody

• It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creation.-Gustave Flaubert
• An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.- Stephen King
• Don’t be paralyzed by the idea that you’re writing a book; just write.- Isabelle Allende
• All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.- Ernest Hemingway
• Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.- Neil Gaiman
• You fail only if you stop writing.- Ray Bradbury

• The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.- Terry Pratchett
• You must write for yourself and not what you think people want to read– Jodi Ellen Malpas
• Every first draft is perfect because all a first draft has to do is exist. – Jane Smiley
• You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page. -Jodi Picoult
• Don’t just plan to write- write. It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style. – PD James

• The only people who think writing is easy are people who don’t write. Writing is a difficult, courageous act. Bravery is required, as well as a great deal of slogging along. A lot of our work is work. – Gillian Roberts
• Step into a scene and let it drip from your fingertips. MJ Bush
• If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter. -Dan Poynter
• To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write. -Robert McKee
• If writing is honest, it cannot be separated from the person who wrote it. -Tennessee Williams

• I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles. -Shannon Hale
• The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it. -Ernest Hemingway
• The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. -Robert Cormier
• Mistakes are the portals of discovery -James Joyce
• And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath

• I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of. -Joss Whedon
• If it’s still in your mind, it is worth taking the risk. -Paulo Coelho
• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good. -William Faulkner
• Do what I did: Pretend you want to do something else and write on the sly until you’re free to do whatever you want!– JK Rowling

• Keep writing. Even if you think it’s terrible, keep writing; you will only get better with practice. And learn to finish the things you begin because the ending is the hardest part. -Lucy Saxon
• Write loads, read voraciously go out and live. Things will emerge in the spaces in between and you might be surprised by what does. -Irenosen Okojie
• You have to write the book that you want to write. You have to be prepared to do your own thing and not bow to the critics, not listen to the policeman in your head saying you shouldn’t do this or that. -Bernardine Evaristo
• Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work. – Will Self

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Hopefully, these writing quotes help you when you get caught up in writer’s block. And if you need some extra motivation, write some quotes and stick them around your monitor–it always helps me out!

Also, check out these other articles on the blog. They’re a great resource for you, too!

• 35 Quotes for Writers to Inspire You
• 5 Things all Successful Authors Need
• 20 Quotes to Get You Reading–As if, you needed an excuse 😉

Be sure to share these writing quotes!