Ralph Keyes Quotes

Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.

I prefer a man who is unskillful, who is an awkward writer, but who has something to say, who is dealing himself one time on every page.

writing about something was not the moral equivalent of doing it,

...fear and courage are like lightning and thunder; they both sart out at the same time, but the fear travels faster and arrives sooner. If we just wait a moment, the requisite courage will be along shortly.

Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.

Tools are totems, an important weapon in the fight against fear.

"...wrote Lawrence Block. "Someone once told me that fear and courage are like lightning and thunder; they both start out at the same time, but the fear travels faster and arrives sooner. If we just wait a moment, the requisite courage will be along shortly." (quoted from Write for Your Live by Lawrence Block)"

Those who generate fog are Wizards of Oz hoping desperately that nobody pulls the curtain to reveal a trembling little writer behind it. This seldom happens. Readers who dare to point out that incomprehensible writing can't be comprehended risk being told that the problem is theirs.

Henrik Ibsen hung a picture of August Strindberg over his desk. “He is my mortal enemy and shall hang there and watch while I write!” explained Ibsen.

Any writing exposes writers to judgment about the quality of their work and their thought. The closer they get to painful personal truths, the more fear mounts — not just about what they might reveal but about what they might discover should they venture too deeply inside. To write well, however, that’s exactly where we must venture.

Authors always feel in danger of being abandoned by loved ones. This is a potent fear. Yet it's as inevitable as writer's cramp when we presume to write words for others to read.

Success as a writer is within the grasp of whoever can tell a story on paper that people want to hear, and is willing to persist, to put up with boredom, frustration, and anxiety.

"When members of the London Poetry Society asked Browning to interpret a particularly difficult passage of Sordello, he read it twice, frowned, then admitted, "When I wrote that, God and I knew what I meant, but now God alone knows."

Rather than risk sounding dense, readers, colleagues, and critics who can't figure out what a writer is trying to say but think it sounds intelligent will typically resort to calling such work "daring," "provocative," or "complex." An unholy alliance of writers and readers is at work here."

Find tricks to keep yourself going,” William Least Heat Moon once advised a group of aspiring writers. “Anything you can do to trick yourself out of panicking, do it.

Fear flushes clogged pores of perception.