30 Helpful Writing Tips from Famous Authors
These writing tips from famous authors are inspiring enough to get the motivation flowing.
Whenever we’re stuck in a period of writer’s block, we always turn to the pros for inspiration.
Here, we’ve gathered 30 of the best tips from famous authors, including everyone from John Steinbeck to Zadie Smith.
Every time we’re stuck, we read through this list and instantly feel a little more inspired and motivated to put pen to paper.
30 Writing Tips from Famous Authors
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it's done. It's that easy, and that hard.” — Neil Gaiman
“If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” — Jodi Picoult
“Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day. It helps.” — John Steinbeck
“You have to get to a very quiet place inside yourself. And that doesn’t mean that you can’t have noise outside. I know some people who put Jazz on, loudly, to write. I think each writer has her or his secret path to the muse.” — Maya Angelo
“Writing a book is a bit like surfing . . . Most of the time you’re waiting. And it’s quite pleasant, sitting in the water waiting. But you are expecting that the result of a storm over the horizon, in another time zone, usually, days old, will radiate out in the form of waves. And eventually, when they show up, you turn around and ride that energy to the shore. It’s a lovely thing, feeling that momentum. If you’re lucky, it’s also about grace. As a writer, you roll up to the desk every day, and then you sit there, waiting, in the hope that something will come over the horizon. And then you turn around and ride it, in the form of a story.” — Tim Winton
“Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.” — Henry Miller
“Whenever I’m asked what advice I have for young writers, I always say that the first thing is to read, and to read a lot. The second thing is to write. And the third thing, which I think is absolutely vital, is to tell stories and listen closely to the stories you’re being told.” — John Green
"Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master." — William Faulkner
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You must simply do things.” — Ray Bradbury
"Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you." — Zadie Smith
“Turn off your cell phone. Honestly, if you want to get work done, you’ve got to learn to unplug. No texting, no email, no Facebook, no Instagram. Whatever it is you’re doing, it needs to stop while you write. A lot of the time (and this is fully goofy to admit), I’ll write with earplugs in — even if it’s dead silent at home.” — Nathan Englander
“Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.” — Mark Twain
“I’ve decided that the trick is just to keep after it for several hours, regardless of your own vacillating assessment of how the writing is going. Showing up and staying present is a good writing day.” — Karen Russel
"There's this feeling in the world that artistic ability is just a gift and there's nothing else to it. I think it's a skill set. It's no different from math. It's a thing you need to learn how to do—you need to practice it, you need to get better at it." — Andy Weir
“You learn so much with each book, but it's what you teach yourself by writing your own books and by reading good books written by other people - that's the key.” — Maggie O’Farrell
“The most helpful quality a writer can cultivate is self-confidence – arrogance, if you can manage it. You write to impose yourself on the world, and you have to believe in your own ability when the world shows no sign of agreeing with you.” — Hilary Mantel
“I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, 'It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.' I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.” — Haruki Murakami
“I try to focus on word count per day. So when I do first drafts, I aim to write a set word count every Monday - Friday until the book is done. That means that I can usually predict the day the book will be done when I start it.” — Taylor Jenkins Reid
“Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.” — Kurt Vonnegut
“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.” — E.B. White
“Your character is always right. No real person thinks they’re being stupid or misguided or bigoted or evil or just plain wrong – so your characters can’t, either. If you’re writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author’s views rather than about the character’s.” — Tana French
“To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.” — Donna Tartt
“Writing must almost have to fail - it must almost not succeed. If it goes well from the start, if I am in the groove, if I come home to writing, it's not the writing for me. I need to have lost the key and to find no replacement. Writing is not a homecoming. Writing is an alibi. Writing is a perpetual stammer of alibis.” — André Aciman
"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut." — Stephan King
“Love is the most important ingredient. Love of words. Of your characters and their flaws. Of truth. You are playing God, but it has to be a loving God.” — Matt Haig
“Write from the heart, write what you believe in, take the time to learn how to write with workshops and classes, and write write write! Every day. Believe in yourself and don't ever give up.” — Kristen Hannah
“Never have an argument with your wife before sitting down to write. It is impossible to write well when your wife is upstairs, royally pissed off with you. Your computer knows she’s pissed at you. Your fingers know she’s pissed at you. Your words know she’s pissed at you. Just stop, go upstairs and say you’re sorry for being such a self-absorbed prick. Then go back downstairs when the timing is right for everyone and watch those words smile back at you.” — Trent Dalton
“Write what scares you. If it’s not scaring you, at least a little, it’s probably not taking enough risks.” — Celeste Ng
“Making it a routine is a gigantic part of it. One corollary of that— and this is probably the most important thing for me— is being willing to write really badly. It won’t hurt you to do that.” — Jennifer Egan
“No matter how stuck I am, I always figure something out from a walk-- something about the motion of my body gets my mind moving as well.” — Madeline Miller
What quote inspires you the most? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear!
Now that you’re feeling motivated, check out some of our top tips for becoming a better writer.