Writing Block Quotes

I'm a very slow screenwriter. It takes time for me to write a screenplay. Also, I feel it's not my strength.

It's painful to consider anything but writing.

It's different every time you write. Sometimes it might be harder than it was the day before. I don't like forcing it, but sometimes, if you force it a little bit, it helps you to push forward, and you get inspired in a way. I've written songs in an hour. And there are songs that have taken me six months.

Somebody finally has to get out an ad, often after hours. Somebody has to stare at a blank piece of paper. Probably nothing was ever more bleak. This is probably the very height of lonesomeness. He is one person and he is alone

Young writers reasonably say, 'I don't know what to write about,' so writing about yourself is a very literal way to begin.

I'd always hoped to write the story as a novel, but there was a long period when the [Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries] movie was stalled and in confusion. I felt frustrated creatively, and just couldn't work on the Baby material till the movie was sorted out.

I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.

Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession.

I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.

I think most writers will say that at the start of each book they think, 'I'm not sure I can do this.' But eventually, you reach a magical point where the story suddenly becomes real to you, and you become totally invested in it.

I wouldn't have been in the mind-set to do another 'Fly.'

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.

When I sit at that typewriter, I have to be frightened of what I'm trying to do. I'm frightened by my own belief that I can actually get a story down on paper.

You can recover from the writing malady only by falling mortally ill and dying.

I'm working on a new novel, in its 3rd draft, but it's hard to write while doing 7th Heaven.

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

I guess there are a lot of writers out there who get really inspired when they're depressed. I can't write about being depressed until I'm happy. That's all there is to it. I need space.

If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.

I've tried writing. Two days later I'd go visit it and say, Jesus Christ, who wrote this crap?

I once started a detective story to make money—but I couldn't get the murder to take place! At the end of three chapters I was still describing the characters and the milieu, so I thought, this is not going to work. No corpse!

Mostly I sat down and said, 'I'm not going to write a boring story.' And that actually, surprisingly, solves most of your problems.

When I started out on 'Min Kamp', I was so extremely frustrated over my life and my writing. I wanted to write something majestic and grand, something like 'Hamlet' or 'Moby Dick,' but found myself with this small life - looking after kids, changing diapers, quarreling with my wife, unable to write anything, really.

I'm not a poet. So the writing process is a difficult one for me.

There was a terrible fear for me when I started writing, which was that if you'd been denied unbelievably tumultuous experience, you didn't have permission to write.