Beautiful Quotes on Writing That Made Me Swoon Over the Act of Writing
That do not come off as saviors who can tell you a writing truth, nor as writing gurus who know everything about writing.
I hate quotes on writing that make me want to hurl my laptop across the room, that make me doubt myself as a writer, that come off as you write the way I am telling you to write or you’re not a writer. I hate quotes on writing that are out to get me.
While not every writing advice is out to get you, quite a few are. A while back, reading an email—from the website I subscribed to—caused me a terrible headache. The point of the email was to push writers like me to live off our creativity. I have a full-time job as a teacher, which I love. And I am a writer—because I write and publish, because I’m dedicating my time, effort and energy to my writing career. Who says I have to be a full-time writer to be called a legitimate writer? I unsubscribed from that website. I don’t want to receive more rigid advice that boils my blood.
A friend of mine who writes in her spare time came across a terrible writing advice on the internet a few weeks ago. This advice reads—you’re not a writer or a legitimate one if you don’t have aspirations to make millions out of your posts/articles. There’re million reasons why writers write. This advice troubles me because it puts money pressure on my writing—and if I take this advice to heart, it starts running a terrible risk, the risk of crushing my writing to its death, because I’ll start thinking, why write at all if my words are not amassing millions? I hate any writing advice that becomes this terrifying voice that shoves your dream of writing in a box, never to be opened again.
But there are writing quotes that inspired me to write, and continue to inspire me. The following quotes remind me why I love writing. These quotes, when I read them, I stopped reading—because I wanted to write them down, with the author’s name next to the quote. They have made me think, they have made me say to myself, wait a minute, this is good, why didn’t I think of this before? They didn’t—and don’t—make me feel rock-bottom low. They have kept me—and still keep me—to strive, to experiment, to grow as a writer. When I read these quotes, it doesn’t feel like the authors of these quotes are trying to manipulate me into accepting what they’re saying about writing as the only writing truth out there. They do not come off as saviors who can tell me a writing truth, nor as writing gurus who know everything about writing.
These quotes, I read them as guides.
I read these quotes from books, newsletters and blog posts. I have these quotes in one folder because I love collecting writing advice that reads like the one who wrote it is gently guiding your head to an open window, where you get to see the world of writing in a new, beautiful light, perhaps a surprising light on your writing journey you didn’t see before. I hope these beautiful quotes inspire you to pick up the pen, or start writing on a blank page on the computer, or dive back into your work-in-progresses.
“You don’t want your gravestone to read, ‘Avoided that which he most wanted to do because it was too hard!’” –George Saunders
“One must be pitiless about this matter of “mood.” In a sense, the writing will create the mood… I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes … and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.” –Joyce Carol Oates
“The “if I had time” lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born—without the luxury of time.” –Julia Cameron
“You can write as a chore or you can have a good time. You can do it the way you used to clear the dinner dishes when you were thirteen, or you can do it as a Japanese person would perform a tea ceremony, with a level of concentration and care in which you can lose yourself, and so in which you can find yourself.” –Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
“Before you learn to write well, to trust yourself as a writer, you will have to learn to be patient in the presence of your own thoughts.” –Several Short Sentences About Writing, Verlyn Klinkenborg
“There’s no one way – there’s too much drivel about this subject. You’re who you are, not Fitzgerald or Thomas Wolfe. You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place – you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter. If he or she is not disciplined, no sympathetic magic will help. The trick is to make time – not steal it – and produce the work. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.” – Writer, Bernard Malamud from How Artists Work: Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
“All you have to do is to write down as much as you can through a one-inch picture frame.” –Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
“The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best as you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.” –Neil Gaiman
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” –Mary Oliver
“Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet.” –Cheryl Strayed
“We can’t control the currents and trends of the industry, the business decisions of agents and editors and publicists, the nature of capitalism, the habits of readers. We can’t control book sales or who gets picked for what prize or fellowship or grant or residency. But we can write beautifully, meaningfully, interestingly, completely. Either you believe that what you’re doing is art—and worthy of being treated as such, by you—or you don’t. That decision is yours, entirely.” –Carmen Maria Machado
“It is perfectly OK to write garbage as long as you edit brilliantly.” –C.J. Cherryh
“You need to give yourself permission to be bad when you are drafting. That reason that’s so important is because a lot of writers, especially when you’re starting out, have that little voice in your head that says, ‘This is so terrible. Why did I think I could write a story? I can’t ever show this to anyone.’ They let that voice get so loud that they don’t end up writing anything. This is where you need to embrace the suck. Let yourself be bad. It’s OK. Everybody’s first drafts are bad. My first drafts are terrible, but once you have a bad first draft down, you can fix it. You can edit it, you can polish it up, but you can’t get anything done if you don’t shut that voice down and get those words out.” –Kate Quinn
“If I waited for perfection … I would never write a word.” –Margaret Atwood
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.” –James Baldwin