#bloc

I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which may go along with my not having much of an attention span. But extremely clever chi-chi writing, or just plain tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing- a sunset or an old shoe- in absolute and simple amazement. ↗

— Raymond Carver

#writers-block

If you think of something, do it. Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that. ↗

— Lydia Davis

#depression #idleness #self-sabotage #terror #writer-s-block

Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost. ↗

— Thomas Bernhard

#writers-block #writing #writers-block

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

Having writers block sucks more than my actual writing. And my writing would be astonishing if I could write how I feel. ↗

— Ally Spina

#humor #writersblock #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

Writer’s block is my unconscious mind telling me that something I’ve just written is either unbelievable or unimportant to me, and I solve it by going back and reinventing some part of what I’ve already written so that when I write it again, it is believable and interesting to me. Then I can go on. Writer’s block is never solved by forcing oneself to “write through it,” because you haven’t solved the problem that caused your unconscious mind to rebel against the story, so it still won’t work – for you or for the reader. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#writer-quotes #writers-block #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