INSPIRATION TO HELP MOP UP THE PERSPIRATION

Writing is hard work. I mean, REALLY hard work. If you write, you already know that. Getting from ‘what if’ to ‘so what’ can be a hard, arduous journey.

So, here are some words to keep you going or make you laugh or convince you to take up horticulture (no puns, please). These are some of my favorites. Refer back here when you're blocked, painted into a corner or need a laugh or an ‘AH HA!’

Just know that we’re all in this together and no one’s getting out alive.

Sometimes, the wrong decision is better than no decision.
--Randall Platt and about a thousand other writers who face a fork in the road

 

 

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
--Little Tommy Edison

Randall sez: I sold a book on the 45th submission. What if I had given up at 44?

Hell, there are no rules here - we’re actually trying to accomplish something.
--Another Thomas Edison gem

 

 

He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an artist.
--St Francis of Assisi

Randall sez: She who works with her hands, her head, her heart and with kids screaming all around her, is a working mother.

Take what you can. Give nothing back!
--Captain Jack Sparrow

 

 

 

Writing is like playing solitaire - you play it alone, you get stuck a lot and sometimes you are not playing with a full deck.
--That Platt Woman

Randall adds: And it’s a great way to piddle away the day.

With the proceeds of my last novel, I purchased a small handbarrow on which my guests’ luggage is wheeled from the station to my house. It needs a coat of paint. With the proceeds of my next novel, I shall have it painted.
--Henry James

 

If all grammarians in the world were placed end to end, it would be a good thing.
--Oscar Wilde

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.
--Robert Benchley

 

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think that university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.
--Flannery O’Connor

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for the love of it, then you do it for a few friends, and finally you do it for money.
--Moliere

 

 

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
--E.L. Doctorow

Randall sez: So keep your battery charged!

Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.
--Jessamyn West

 

 

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.
--Rod Serling

All the world’s a stage. Some of us just have better seats.
--Unknown

Randall sez: whoever Unknown was, she was really one smart dame!

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
--Alfred Hitchcock

Eighty percent of success is showing up.
--Woody Allen

Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?
--Orson Wells to Ed Wood
Ed Wood
Rudolph Grey, Scott Alexander

Life is too important to be taken seriously.
--Oscar Wilde