Are you taking part in NaNoWriMo this year? If so, then you’re probably at a point where you’d love some distraction, but you totally can’t afford the time as you’re working toward that 50,000 word deadline. Always one to be helpful, I’m offering some links to videos that focus on NaNoWriMo. That way, you can waste your time on the computer while still having some sort of legitimate claim to the idea that you’re working toward your goal. Whose got your back? That’s right. I do. If you’re a slacker, that is.

A quick and dirty list of some of my favourite writing quotes for you to use in any article, post, diatribe, speech, dedication, mantra or bellow to the heavens. Hope you enjoy and feel free to add your own in the comments!

Ambition
1. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C.S. Lewis

The Aging Writer
2. With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
James Thurber

3. If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.
Kingsley Amis

4. I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tell me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.
Jeffrey Bernard.

Research
5. Get the facts first. You can distort them later.
Mark Twain

Honing
6. The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
Mark Twain

7. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. Ray Bradbury

8. Every writer I know has trouble writing.
Joseph Heller quotes

Deadlines
9. I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
Douglas Adams

10. Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.
Paul Theroux

Procrastination
11. For a moment, nothing happened.Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
Douglas Adams

12. The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
Agatha Christie

13. Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance
Dan Greenburg

Getting It Right
14. A good novel tells us the truth about it’s hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

15. The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.
Richard Harding Davis

16. The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy

The Truth about Writing
17. A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.
William Faulkner

18. Let’s face it, writing is hell.
William Styron

20. For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Ernest Hemingway

21. I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.
Peter De Vries

22. The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
Cyril Connolly quotes

Criticism
23. This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
Dorothy Parker

Getting Paid
24. The free-lance writer is the person who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
Robert Benchley

25. The large print giveth, but the small print taketh away.
Tom Waits

Companions
26. A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It’s a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the typewriter keys.
Barbara Holland

27. A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.
P. L. Travers

Ah, the joy of working with editors:

“I handed in a script last year and the studio didn’t change one word. The word they didn’t change was on page 87.” -Steve Martin

Why is reality always such a paradox?

“The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.” -Tom Clancy

This is one of those “it’s funny ’cause it’s true” things:

“The freelance writer is the person who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.”  -Robert Benchley

Now that I think about it, maybe that’s not funny at all…