As predicted, I’m doing a horrible job keeping up with this blog, but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to share some of my favorite quotes that deal with the craft of writing. I actually have these quotes listed as a document within my writing template so that with every new project, they are only a few clicks away. When I have a depressing writing session (as I did this morning), I can breathe them in quickly. Not all of them are ‘inspirational’, but I think they’re all helpful… to me at least. Your mileage may vary. Here they are in no particular order:

“Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”

Stephen King

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

Pablo Picasso

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

Stephen King

“The first 3 million words are practice.”

Stephen King

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”

Enid Bagnold

“All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.”

Steve Almond

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

Ernest Hemingway

“Making people believe the unbelievable is no trick; it’s work. … Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything.”

Stephen King

“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. … I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.”

Gore Vidal

“If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”

Elmore Leonard

“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.”

Larry L. King

“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

“Don’t expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.”

Leslie Gordon

“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.”

Stephen King

“Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.”

Jim Tully

“Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.”

Ray Bradbury

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

Ernest Hemingway

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is … the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

Mark Twain

“Take some fucks out of your fuck basket. Not all of them! You need some fucks to give to the work. But too many fucks makes the basket too heavy to carry. Caring too much turns into a burden. Even autonomous actions like breathing and sleeping become difficult if you think too much about them.”

Chuck Wendig