Marc Guggenheim Quotes

The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn't go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him.

Editing is hard but nowhere NEAR as tough as facing that blank page and blinking cursor each day. You're all alone and no one else can do it. At least with editing you have someone in the trench with you.

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

The most important thing in writing is to have written. I can always fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank one.

You can fix anything but a blank page.

Writing is hard, even for authors who do it all the time.

I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to stare at a blank page — do they want someone to write on it?

Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.

When you're writing a movie or a play and writing isn't going well, which is for me the normal condition - it's an exceptional day when suddenly I've got something and it's going well - you can call the studio or the producer or whoever is waiting for it and say, "I know I said I was going to have it in by the end of the summer.

writing is the loneliest job in the world. There's always that frustrating chasm to bridge between the concept and the writing of it. We're a harassed tribe, we writers.

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?

I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.

I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.

I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.

Usually if a scene's really hard to write, I just don't write it. Nothing's coming to mind.

Rereading places you at the point where it has to go on, knowing it is as good as you can get it up to there. There is always juice somewhere.

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly. My first drafts are filled with lurching, clichéd writing, outright flailing around. Writing that doesn’t have a good voice or any voice. But then there will be good moments. It seems writer’s block is often a dislike of writing badly and waiting for writing better to happen.

The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not.

Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.

It does feel great to be writing, but the process is sometimes excruciating.

The roughest part for me when I'm writing a song is staring at a blank page. Where am I going from here? If you're a songwriter, you have to do that every time you start a song.

There isn't going to be anyone to tell you what to do most of the time. It has to be your own decision and you have to learn to trust that, or learn that it's wrong. The hard truth is that there are people who believe they're writers and work hard at it and are sincere about it, but they don't make it. You have to be prepared for that possibility.

There are many things I think about that never get to the point of becoming serious. In other words, I try to talk myself out of writing, sometimes for many years, and when I run out of arguments, I write.