13 Quotes About Writing From J.K. Rowling, John Green, and All Your Other Favorite Authors
We’re more than halfway through with National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short) — how’s your opus coming along? As you know by now, writing can be as frustrating as it is rewarding. For every page written, there are moments of hesitation and doubt, but true writers power through because they want their ideas to be heard more than anything. Whether you’re committing to tackle 50,000 words in a month for the first time ever or you’re a seasoned NaNoWriMo veteran, get inspired by these quotations from your favorite authors that will encourage you to put your best word forward.
1/13“You have to resign yourself to the fact that you waste a lot of trees before you write anything you really like, and that’s just the way it is. It’s like learning an instrument, you’ve got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot, ‘cause I wrote an awful lot before I wrote anything I was really happy with.”
— J.K. Rowling
2/13“Read a lot. Read broadly...Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored...Write a lot.”
— John Green
3/13“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
4/13“Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well.”
— Stephen King
5/13“A lot of people tell writers to write about what they know. And that’s good advice, because it gives you a lot of things to draw on. But I always like to add that they should write about things they love. And by that I mean things that fascinate or excite them personally...If you write about things that you feel passionately about, it is so much easier to write.”
— Suzanne Collins
6/13“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
— Mark Twain
7/13“Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things—thoughts, ideas, opinions.”
— Paolo Coelho
8/13"Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent."
— Harper Lee
9/13“There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.”
— Ernest Hemingway
10/13“People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.”
— R.L. Stine
11/13"Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing."
— Joan Didion
12/13“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
13/13“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”
— Maya Angelou
You will never regret choosing kindness. Be nicer to people, including yourself. What’s your go-to karaoke song?
Biz Markie's "Just a Friend." You got what I neeeeeed. What fashion item seems to always be on your shopping list?
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