Lorrie Moore Quotes

He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.

I find I have to touch what I am working on every day, or a deep-seated dread kicks in that is very hard to overcome.

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

I don't believe in writer's block. Think about it - when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn't it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer's block is having too much time on your hands.

I never get writer's block, but I do have days where I crawl under the duvet.

I'm not really worried about writer's block.

I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on. But routinely when I finish a book, I think, "What will I do? Where will I get an idea?" And a kind of low-level panic sets in. And then eventually something happens. I don't know. If I knew how it happened I would repeat the process, but I don't know - something just occurs to me.

I think a lot of time, I'm just writing my worst fears.

The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

I procrastinate to a point where I'm filled with self-loathing and then I start writing. It's usually a state of self-loathing that gets me going.

Starting is hard so I really need to give myself permission to do a bad job. I always give myself leave to write total nonsense for as long as I need to release the pressure, because it's really hard to start if you feel like that first sentence you write has to actually mean something.

If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first line.

I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.

I am lazy, but for some reason, I am so paranoid that I end up working hard.

I think every writer doubts themselves, every day. You procrastinate because you're afraid. You're always afraid it's not going to be as good as you want it to be. But, the key is overcoming fear.

I'd be far too self-conscious and insecure if I suspected my editor might be a better novelist than I.

I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best of them. But put a deadline on me and I start getting writer's block.

A writer who isn't writing is asking for trouble.

Usually halfway through a book I have a serious depression, so I go on safari on my ranch in South Africa, or fishing off my island in the Seychelles. When I come back and re-read it, I think: 'What was all that about, Smith? It's fine, just get on with it.'

I've never had writer's block.

I don't believe in writer's block.

A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.

There's no writer's block; there's only distraction.

You have to write about what scares you.