Ten Quotes To Get You To Start Writing Again

It was on the shores of this lake in Temagami, Ont., where I started working on my horror novel in September 2020.

Last September, during a solo writing retreat to Northern Ontario, I created an audacious goal for myself.

By March of 2021, I’d complete the manuscript for my first horror novel. All 60,000 words.

I’ve only made it to 23,000 words.

It feels like a cruel April Fool’s joke.

Between the pandemic, wrapping up the MBA, and subsequently searching for a new job, my fiction writing fell on the back burner.

So, I did what any writer would do: scour the web for some motivational quotes to get me going again.

If you’re also stuck on a writing project, I hope these quotes help you put pen to paper. Or fingers to keyboard.

Godspeed.

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good.” - William Faulkner

“There are many good reasons for writing that have nothing to do with being published. Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and one of its satisfactions is to come to terms with your life narrative. Another is to work through some of life’s hardest knocks—loss, grief, illness, addiction, disappointment, failure—and to find understanding and solace.” - William Zinsser

"You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it." - Octavia E. Butler

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page." - Jodi Picoult

"You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." - Jack London

“The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.” -William Zinsser

"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

“Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard.” - William Zinsser

"I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles." - Shannon Hale

"Start before you’re ready." - Steven Pressfield