Writing Insecurity Quotes

Writers, at least writers of fiction, are always full of anxiety and worry.

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.

These poets (fans of whatever) should be contacting other young poets on their way - not those who have made it, who sit on a star and then have plenty of problems: usually no money, usually the fear their own writing is going down the sink hole.

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn't breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children's mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other.

I can't write things. I'm embarrassed all the time about that, particularly if people don't know that about me.

Constant rejection. No security. Career paths being dictated by freelance reviewers. And of course, the terror of the writing desk, of the blank page. Why is it so hard for our non-writer friends to understand this - that it's a job?

I'm fairly competant as a director and actor, but I am Mr. Neurotic as a writer. I just don't have enough confidence in my abilities to take criticism well. I take it personally. Start with 'It's a masterpiece,' and then tell me what you think could be changed.

I had never really co-written. I thought it was weak or something if I needed to collaborate.

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.

Jealousy is such a direct attack on whatever measure of confidence you’ve been able to muster. But if you continue to write, you are probably going to have to deal with it, because some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of the most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know-people who are, in other words, not you.

I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me.

Every day I wake up afraid that I won't be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.

I never thought what I wrote was good enough to be published. I thought of myself as completely detached from that constellation of real writers. It was completely for myself.

Writers displace their anxiety on to the tools of the trade. It's better to say that you haven't got the right pencil than to say you can't write, or to blame your computer for losing your chapter than face up to your feeling that it's better lost.

I'm certainly afraid of not being able to write for some reason. I guess I've had spells of not necessarily writer's block, but something like that. I find that pretty terrifying.

I certainly wouldn't feel safe telling people I was writer.

Unless you sell millions, I think it's very hard as a writer not to feel anxious about what you put out. I always feel I could do better.

I took two fiction-writing courses in college and majored in literature. I felt that I had a knack though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a talent. But it scared me. I felt it was a childish thing wanting to write and that I would forget about it eventually.

You always feel like a hack and a fraud when you're writing. It's just how it goes.