30 (More) Quotes About Writing to Put in Your Journal

Every writer keeps a notebook. If you don't already, you should start. It's a place to keep all of your freewriting, little snippets you've collected to possibly use in future works, and of course quotes that inspire you to move forward. That's exactly what I focused on when gathering together quotes for this sequel to my first article about writing quotes. Moving forward. Quotes that knock you out of a rut and remind you that the most important thing of all to do when writing is keep writing, no matter how badly you feel you're doing.

"To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself." -- Anne Rice

"You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more." --Michael Connelly

"By writing much, one learns to write well." -- Robert Southey

"Write, write, & write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise." -- Jane Yolen

"If you do not hear music in your words, you have put too much thought into your writing and not enough heart." -- Terry Brooks

"Subplots bring realism to your main plot simply by existing – by interrupting the flow. Why is this? Because life doesn’t move forward all at once. Interruptions happen, change rushes in, we juggle three or ten balls at once. Readers don’t expect continuous narratives." -- Elizabeth Sims

"Literature is the ditch I’m going to die in. It’s still the thing I care most about." -- Thomas McGuane

"A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film." -- Lorrie Moore

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." -- Ray Bradbury

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” -- Philip Pullman

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." -- Robert Frost

"Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story; to make them forget, whenever possible, that they are reading a story at all." -- Stephen King

"I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose." -- Stephen King (this one's my favorite)

"The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with." -- William Faulkner

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” -- Madeleine L'Engle

"Fiction is about stuff that’s screwed up." -- Nancy Kress

"It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly." -- C. J. Cherryh

"I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly." -- Edgar Rice Burroughs

"A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God." -- Sidney Sheldon

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” -- Louis L'Amour

"Everybody wants to feel that you’re writing to a certain demographic because that’s good business, but I’ve never done that … I tried to write stories that would interest me. I’d say, what would I like to read?… I don’t think you can do your best work if you’re writing for somebody else, because you never know what that somebody else really thinks or wants." -- Stan Lee

"Don’t try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience—every reader is a different person." -- William Knowlton Zinsser

"If the novel is dead, I’m a necrophiliac." -- Tiffany Madison

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." -- E. L. Doctorow

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending." -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The first sentence can't be written until the final sentence is written." -- Joyce Carol Oates

"The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes." -- Agatha Christie

"Write regularly, day in and day out, at whatever times of day you find that you write best. Don’t wait till you feel that you are in the mood. Write, whether you are feeling inclined to write or not." -- Arnold J. Toynbee

"For me, I think it was a little easier to write thinking that nobody was listening." -- Dan Kennedy

"Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they were and why they were in the plane to begin with." -- Nancy Ann Dibble