Jessica St. Clair Quotes

I'm always terrified when I'm writing.

All my life, I've been frightened at the moment I sit down to write.

In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always stopped me in my tracks. Or if I did find my way to put a pen to paper or finger on a keyboard I'd give up after a few minutes. I'd find other things to do: Anything but writing.

I would never write, ever. I might as well exile myself.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

You never get over the fear of writing.

Writing is inherently scary.

Fear of commitment lies behind the fear of writing.

I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.

I am not - thank heavens - one of those 'driven' writers who spend a fortnight buckled with empty fright over an untouched page only to wake at two in the morning feverish with paragraphs.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

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

I always had a superstitious fear of setting up a too well-designed writing place and then finding that the writing had absconded.

That's what makes writer's block so painful. You think the well has run dry, maybe somewhere in the heavens the tap has been turned off. That's beyond frightening.

But there's a little guy who sits astride my brain with a whip, and if I'm away from the machine for more than a couple of hours during the day, this little guy's lashing away.

I couldn't write because my nervous system was so bad - I couldn't even use a pen.

Anybody who tells you they're not scared when starting a new book project is a very good liar.

The most terrifying thing in my life is a blank sheet of paper.

I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.

I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That's a great way to freeze up.

When I write, the first blank page, or any blank page, means nothing to me. What means something is a page that has been filled with words.

I'm very finicky about when I'm in the right mood to write. So most days, I find some excuse not to do anything.

For a long period in my life - it lasted about 10 years - I had writer's block.

When I can't write, it depresses me.