Inspiring Words for Writers, By Writers

It's a universal truth that every story, every article, every poem, starts with a single word, and every writer ever has, at some point, stared down a blank page trying desperately to get the fingers to type or write that first word. Sometimes we give up, and sometimes we find the word. Sometimes we have to look beyond ourselves to find the will to get going.

Even when I have an idea and a headline, I can struggle to get started. To find that first word. That first sentence. Let’s not even get into the first paragraph. There’s a plethora of advice out there on overcoming writer’s block. Nearly all of it will work for someone. None of it will work for everyone.

What works for me on occasion is looking for inspiration from people who have succeeded as writers on a level I have yet to reach. It’s not that most of them are saying things that are all that new or profound, and it’s certainly true that this is a shallow kind of inspiration. But, it could be all you need to shake loose the self-doubt, fatigue, boredom, or whatever else it is that’s cluttering up the space that the words should be flowing from.

All that said, I might be blocked, but I’m busy, so I want my inspiration in pithy little soundbites. Tiny nuggets of motivation. Quick-reading tidbits. I’m not looking for anything earthshaking, groundbreaking, or life changing, after all. If that’s about your speed too, the following are from a special chapter of my ongoing quote journal:

"Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on." - Louis L’Amour

"A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight." - Ursula K LeGuin

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath

"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering." - Robert Frost

"Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers." - Ray Bradbury

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." - E. L. Doctorow

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master." -Ernest Hemingway

"You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it." -Neil Gaiman

"So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads." - Dr. Seuss

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. " - Thomas Jefferson

"You can make anything by writing." - C.S. Lewis

"When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time’." - Stephen King

"A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it." - Roald Dahl

"The most important thing in writing is to have written. I can always fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank one." - Nora Roberts

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

"I think new writers are too worried that it has all been said before. Sure it has, but not by you." - Asha Dornfest

"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new." - Unknown

"Most writers write to say something about other people- and it doesn’t last. Good writers write to find out about themselves– and it lasts forever." – Gloria Steinem

"Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say." - Mitch Albom