writer’s block

“I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.”

~ Lincoln Child

“When I write I pretend I’m telling a story to someone in the room and I don’t want them to get up until I’m finished.”

~ James Patterson

“When you’re building a character, or at least when I’m building a character, you start saying, ‘How am I going to make people like him?'” ~ John Sanford

“I needed to find my way to write. I need about six hours of uninterrupted time in order to produce about two hours of writing, and when I accepted that and found the way to do it, then I was able to write.”

~ Robert B. Parkter

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” ~ Lawrence Block

“I know people who have suffered writer’s block, and I don’t think I’ve ever had it. A friend of mine, for three years he couldn’t write. And he said that he thought of stories and he knew the stories, could see the stories completely, but he could never find the door. Somehow that first sentence was never there. And without the door, he couldn’t do the story. I’ve never experienced that. But it’s a chilling thought.”

~ Donald E. Westlake

Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -you just don’t know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you’d mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place. Trust your demon. ~ Roger Zelazny

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way. ~ Ray Bradbury

“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut 

Good authors mature over time: it does take awhile. ~ Richard K. Morgan