Ever doubt your own ability to write? If you answered yes, you may discover you’re in good company. The next time you’re feeling a little beat-up while sitting at your keyboard, recall what a few notable writers have gone on record to say:
“All writers think they suck.”
—Elizabeth Gilbert
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers.”
—William S. Burroughs
“All good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”
—Anne Lamott
“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.”
―Octavia E. Butler
“Ours is a trade of perseverance, not perfection.”
—David Safford
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
—Ernest Hemingway
“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.”
―Agatha Christie
“Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story.”
―F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”
―Ray Bradbury
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”
―James Joyce
“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
―Richard Bach