Tom Stoppard Quotes

Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.

You can't sit down and decide what you want to write about.

My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing.

I'm constantly battling writer's block; it usually takes me two hours to write anything.

I write all the time and I try to think of ideas all the time.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

I'm always looking at ways of shaking up the writing experience because I think it helps.

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

I find writing really difficult - definitely the most difficult of all the things I do.

Many novice writers, students in particular, think that writing is little more than copying down their self-talk, the palaver of the voices they hear in their heads. Of course, self-talk is thinking, and writing begins with thinking.

I'm not a believer that you have to write every day. If I felt industrious, I'd spend ten hours a week writing. The writing is going on all the time in my head; the trick is to capture it. Showers are great. Traffic jams are great.

I might be into writing... I'd like to try it someday. I always come up with some good ideas.

I spend days with writers' block. It is a problem.

My cure for writer's block is to step away from the thing I'm stuck on, usually a novel, and write something totally different. Besides fiction, I write poetry, screenplays, essays and journalism. It's usually not the writing itself that I'm stuck on, but thing I'm trying to write. So I often have four or five things going at once.

I spend a lot of time writing. I get inspiration from texts rather than images.

Pundits always have something to write about; the novelist just has a blank screen.

I've always thought that writing isn't really that hard. It's having a good idea that's hard.

If you do enough planning before you start to write, there's no way you can have writer's block. I do a complete chapter by chapter outline.

I don't have writer's block, really. I do have times when I can't get the lead, and that is the only part of the story which I have serious trouble with. I don't write a word of the article until I have the lead. It just sets the whole tone - the whole point of view.

Professionals don't get writer's block. I can always come up with the punch line.

And, of course, there were some times when I had writer's block and I had a hard time figuring out how to express what I wanted to express.

If somebody says that they want to write a book but do not know what to write about, they will never write a book.

Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'

I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.