REBECCA BURLAK

MARCH 10, 2015

EXPERIENCING WRITER’S BLOCK? TAKE SOME TIPS FROM THE GREATS

You have a deadline to meet and you want the article to be top-notch, but your mind is blank and you find yourself staring at your screen struggling to put thoughts into words. Unfortunately for all frustrated writers, there is no push-the-button solution for writer’s block. But to give you a shunt in the right direction, find out what some of the greatest authors have to say about the art of writing.

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write.
Let them think you were born that way.”
–Ernest Hemingway

“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
– William Shakespeare

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
― Mark Twain

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― Stephen King

“There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.”
― Sylvia Plath

“Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.”
― Victor Hugo

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”
― George Orwell