A few thoughts on writing

Several weeks ago, I wrote that when I was a young kid I started an Encouragement Box. I grabbed an old shoebox and started collecting old notes, photos, and comics that encouraged me and made me laugh at life’s challenges. (If you’re ever feeling down, Snoopy and the gang from Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes are good places to turn.)

I also kept quotes about writing that inspired me. Writing quotes still inspire me. I love how they offer advice, but also give you hope that maybe one day the words will come. I find that often the advice applies to writing, but just as easily to living your best life.

My blogger friend Wynne Leon in her post My Favorite Writer Quotes recently shared a few of her favorite quotes. Of course, I got to thinking about my own list and want to share some of mine. There’s some similarities, but some differences too.

My list is rather lengthy, they tend to collect and pile-up over time. A few of these have made it into past posts. I’m sure I’ll find a way to include them in future ones too. I’ll post some today and a few more the next two Saturdays. Let me know what you think.

Thirty of my favorite Writing Quotes:

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ―Ernest Hemingway

“I write to discover what I know.” —Flannery O’Connor

“A word after a word after a word is power.” —Margaret Atwood

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” —Joan Didion

“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.” ―Neil Gaiman

“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” ―Neil Gaiman

Image by Pixabay.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” —Robert Frost

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” —Benjamin Franklin

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” —Jack Kerouac

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” ―Thomas Jefferson

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” ― Douglas Adams

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” ―E. L. Doctorow

Image by Photomix Company by Pexels.

“I hate writing, I love having written.”  ―Dorothy Parker

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”  ―Nathaniel Hawthorne

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” ―James Michener

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” ―F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I write for the same reason I breathe — because if I didn’t, I would die.” ―Isaac Asimov

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” ―Cyril Connolly

“Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” ―Mark Twain

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” ―Jodi Picoult

Image by Pexels.

“Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.” ―J.K. Rowling

“Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” ―Gloria Steinem

“If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” ―Martin Luther

“If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing . . . then you are a writer.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke

“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” ―E. L. Doctorow

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.” ―Stephen King

“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of job: It’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.” —Neil Gaiman

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” —Issac Asimov

“I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” —James Michener

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation.” —Graham Greene