Writer's Fear Quotes

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.

When a book comes out I wonder if one person will buy it. It's agony. Of course it's stupid, but it's agony.

I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.

I have turned away from the thought of writing fiction in the past through what I suppose is, actually, fear. The direct, raw invitation for the reader to come in and explore my imagination is fairly scary for me so I have busied myself with so much else.

My great fear of being attacked or trivialized by my contemporaries made me concentrate on what I was trying to do as a writer. It forced me to draw some conclusions that were my own.

I love writing but I hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says. "You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy, I'm a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?" and I really, really don't. I don't want any trouble. I'll go peaceable-like.

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

I hope to write someday and that’s even more terrifying than performing. You don’t just entertain the audience, you give them little bits of your soul.

I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.

Completing any writing project, particularly a novel, is a daunting prospect. Many people become frozen by the prospect. Others keep waiting for the right time. Some wait for the spark of inspiration. Even experienced writers find it is easier to do anything other than actually write.

At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.

I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.

A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!

I dread first drafts! I worry each day that it won't come, that nothing will happen.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

When you're on your own, you have all the self-censorship that everybody has when they try and write. All the little voices that say, 'No, you can't write that, what will they think of that?'

When I wrote my first book, I was too scared to find out how people got books published. I was convinced that you needed some sort of magical potion that I didn't have.

To be willing to sort of die in order to move the reader, somehow. Even now I'm scared about how sappy this'll look in print, saying this.

Suppose that a person writes what she must. That is only the first step of becoming a writer. The work must survive the moment of creation. It must get out to an audience. She or he must dare to show the work. She must risk ridicule, misunderstanding, scandal, condemnation, & what's often worse, none of the above: silence. No attention at all.

I never want to write something until I know every scene in the movie. I don't want someone hiring me and then me not being able to write it. Which is always a fear. So I like to figure it out, know all the characters, and know almost every scene in the movie before I start writing.

I tend to push whatever is looking over my shoulder away when I am writing. It's once the box of books arrive that I say I'm going to be pilloried for this or that. But then you realize it's done, and there is nothing I can do. I'm proud of the book.

The danger that keeps me just a little frightened with every book I write, however, is that I'll overreach myself once too often and try to write a story that I'm just plain not talented or skilful enough to write. That's the dilemma every storyteller faces. It is painful to fail. But it is far sadder when a storyteller stops wanting to try.

You want to hear an agent scream, say, 'I'm thinking about doing a collection of short stories set in the Ozarks.'

I write very tightly, and my big fear is boring people. I want them to read quickly, stopped in their tracks. I resist indulging myself.

I've written so many verses and keep on writing so many more that I became afraid that if I didn't write them into one big book, I might forget some of them.