We achieve great things by standing on the shoulders of giants, so here is a collection of some of the best writing quote by great authors throughout history.

Some of them are moving, some are inspiring and some are just darn funny.

Especially the one about beating Jane Austen over the head with her own shin bone. 

Quotes about being successful as an author

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
- Winston S. Churchill


“Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.”
- A. A. Milne


“There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money either.”
- Robert Graves


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

Quotes about how authors find inspiration

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.”
- Orson Scott Card


“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
- Madeleine L'Engle


“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
- Maya Angelou


“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
- Lloyd Alexander

Quotes about the rules of writing

 

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.“

- W. Somerset Maugham

“You learn by writing short stories. Keep writing short stories. The money’s in novels, but writing short stories keeps your writing lean and pointed.”- Larry Niven 

“If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.”- Edgar Rice Burroughs 

Quotes about the nuts and bolts of writing

“The first draft of anything is shit.”- Ernest Hemingway

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.”- C. J. Cherryh

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”- Douglas Adams

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”- Mark Twain

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”- Charles Baudelaire

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

“My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.”- Anton Chekhov        

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

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”- Flannery O'Connor

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”- Jack Kerouac

Quotes about the perils of being an author

“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.”- Erica Jong

“The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.”- William Faulkner

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”- Gustave Flaubert

“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”- Oscar Wilde

Random quotes about writing

 

“I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.- Stephen Kingthat.”- Stephen King

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”- Isaac Asimov

“People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.”- Joss Whedon

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”- Mark Twain

 

Have you tried The Novel Factory? Novel writing software written for writers, by writers.

If you're really serious about becoming a writer, then you need to be in a writing group - no question, and no excuses.

Beginning writers are often nervous about joining a writing group, and yes, it can be daunting - but it's well worth the effort, for many reasons.

Firstly, once you've started showing your work to others, it will help build your confidence. The first time is the hardest, but the vast majority of writing groups are supportive, and you will be pleasantly surprised to hear the nice things they will say about your work. And if you take their comments for improvement on board and make a genuine effort to edit well, it will be even more encouraging when they see and point out how the quality of your writing is getting better over time.

As well as saying nice things, if they're worth their salt, they will also find the weak points in your work, and while praise is nice, constructive criticism is what's of real value - as this is going to make you into a better writer. A good critique group will highlight areas for improvement in your work in a sensitive manner.

There's no need to take criticism personally or feel that it's in any way putting you down. That is not the point at all. The purpose of criticism is to improve your skills, so a writing group will find areas for improvement in any piece of work - even if it's damn near perfect. Critique areas may be anything from grammar and punctuation to pace, balance, emotional impact, tense, dialogue, description - anything.

Having a fresh set of eyes read something is very useful to highlight areas that don't make sense that you, as the writer, will find it impossible to know, as you have the whole story in your head and know where it's going.

And of course, associating with skilled people who are also passionate about writing will give you the advantage that you can draw on their skills and knowledge.

So, if you've been making excuses for not joining a writing group - man up and get yourself down to one!

The use of novel writing software divides people more passionately than you might expect.
People who are against it might say it's cheating. Others might say that's simply not necessary, or even that it gets in the way or causes rigidity and gets in the way of brainstorming and natural flow.

Well, of course I'm biased but I think that if there are tools available for any task, you should take advantage of them. Of course not all tools (or software) is useful, and not all 'progress' is for the best.
One of my pet hates is how difficult it is to accurately rewind or forward DVDs - with video tapes it was easy to skip back to rewatch something you missed. Now it involves so much jumping around to way too far either side that it's just not worth the effort.

But back to the plot! We're talking about novel writing software not movie watching.


To address the points above - in reality, if you think that using software for writing is cheating, then you shouldn't even be using a word processor. Think how easy it is to make changes and shuffle things around, and be corrected in your spelling and grammar, and even style! It really depends how far you want to go back. Is using a typewriter cheating? Should you go back to pen and paper? Maybe using a biro is cheating and you should be whittling your own quill. So much for the cheating argument.

The other arguments are more valid. If you're someone that can keep track of notes about dozens of characters and locations, a complex plot, clues, foreshadowing and the rest - then great! You probably don't need writing software to help you.

However, personally, I always find myself drowning in notes, some of which are out of date - but which ones?! - losing files all over my desk and laptop, and spending ages in frustration trying to find the profile of the right character, because I couldn't be bothered to file everything neatly as I went along. I wanted to get on with writing!

So, for mere mortals like me, having novel software that keeps track of my characters, files them automatically and gives them back to me in a few intuitive clicks, takes away a great deal of my headaches and leaves me to get on with my next draft.

And as for the argument that novel writing software stifles creativity - with the right software, what you put in, you get out! Good software should harness and inspire creativity, not the opposite.