#writing

Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone. More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp. It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind. (“Mad House”) ↗

— Richard Matheson

#writer-s-block #writing #writers-block

How could poetry and literature have arisen from something as plebian as the cuneiform equivalent of grocery-store bar codes? I prefer the version in which Prometheus brought writing to man from the gods. But then I remind myself that…we should not be too fastidious about where great ideas come from. Ultimately, they all come from a wrinkled organ that at its healthiest has the color and consistency of toothpaste, and in the end only withers and dies. ↗

— Alice Weaver Flaherty

#poetry #writing #writers-block

he had been making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in particular ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#writing #writers-block

Why do I keep evading my work? Is it because I’m afraid of being confronted by my lack of abilities? ↗

— Candace Bushnell

#work #writers-block #writing #writers-block

I haven't written in a week. It's like holding your breath under water. You feel an awful constriction and then the instinct to propel yourself. ↗

— D.A. Botta

#writers-block #writing #writist #writers-block

He had a book to finish. Ten-thousand words. The other ninety thousand had been difficult. This last tenth seemed impossible. His plot had become derailed. He was unable to see his way through the smoke and coke dust of a mythical railway track that should stretch ahead. Yes, the characters were there, good and solid. Indeed, the story's engine was strong and had shunted yet forward and forward, with only one or two sharp halts. But six weeks ago he met the bumpers. R. was now stuck in a deserted station, his progress blocked. ("Out Back") ↗

— Garry Douglas Kilworth

#writers #writing #writers-block

The trouble with a baby, for writists, is that they take away your useful melancholy, even the energy to invent some. ↗

— D.A. Botta

#writers-block #writing #writist #writers-block

Maybe the real problem wasn’t that she had nothing to write about, but that she had too much. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of her finiteness after all, but rather Infinity and how it called her to begin somewhere, anywhere. To begin might be an acceptance that indeed she was some kind of creator, with tremendous powers. It might mean taking people’s lives into her hands–her own life, her friends’, even her father’s or mother’s. And maybe she was afraid they would think she had animated a wandering Frankenstein no one wanted to hold. ↗

— L.L. Barkat

#mary-shelley #writer-s-block #writing #writers-block

If she was going to write a novel, she felt defeated before she began, because someone might be coming along to pick it apart, looking for symbols like The Conch or The Whale, which seemed to have mythic proportions. ↗

— L.L. Barkat

#novel-writing #writers #writers-block #writing #writers-block

A writer is always writing for someone. ↗

— L.L. Barkat

#writing #writers-block