“No time spent writing is ever wasted. If you only spend twenty minutes, and find only a sentence or two flowing, you will have still done something important. You will have written today.”

– Anonymous

“To write takes dreaming and remembering and thinking and imagining — and very often what feels like wasting time. It takes silence and solitude. It takes being okay with making a huge mess and not knowing what you’re doing. Then it takes rewriting and struggling to find your story and the truth of the story, and then the meaning of the story. It takes being comfortable with your own doubts and fears and questions. And there’s just no fast and easy way around it.”

– Barbara Abercrombie

“The essential question is, ‘Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?’ Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words your characters will speak, ideas — inspiration.”

– Doris Lessing

“Do not overwrite. Rich, ornate prose is hard to digest, generally unwholesome, and sometimes nauseating.”

–  E. B. White