If you need a boost of inspiration, look no further than this list of the 23 best Stephen King quotes from On Writing.

1. Your job isn’t to find ideas, but recognize them.

“There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers . . . two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.” 

2. There will always be critics.

“If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it.”

3. Don’t stop writing.

“stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.” 

4. Put your desk in the corner.

“Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.” 

5. Take seriously the craft of writing.

“I’m not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I’m not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn’t a popularity contest, it’s not the moral Olympics, and it’s not church. But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.” 

6. Don’t dress up your vocabulary.

Put your vocabulary on the top shelf of your toolbox, and don’t make any conscious effort to improve it. . . . One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. 

“use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful.” 

7. Avoid adverbs.

“The adverb is not your friend. . . . I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs.” 

8. Focus on paragraphs.

“I would argue that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing.” 

9. Don’t spend too much time researching good writing.

“the hours we spend talking about writing is time we don’t spend actually doing it.” 

10. Be willing to work for it.

“If you don’t want to work your ass off, you have no business trying to write well.” 

11. Read. A lot.

“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.”

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” 

12. Read so that you can create.

“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.”

“The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a palace (a mind-set, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.” 

13. Read widely.

“You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so.” 

14. Apply the Kondo test.

“If there’s no joy in it, it’s just no good. It’s best to go on to some other area, where the deposits of talent may be richer and the fun quotient higher.” 

15. Write (the first draft) quickly.

” I believe the first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months.” 

16. Where you write matters.

“The biggest aid to regular production is working in a serene atmosphere.” 

17. Establish a concrete goal.

“You need a concrete goal . . . The longer you keep to these basics, the easier the act of writing will become. Don’t wait for the muse.” 

“I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words.” 

18. Show up, every day.

“Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ‘til noon or seven ‘til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.”

 19. Tell the truth. Be brave.

“What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all . . . as long as you tell the truth.” 

“What you know makes you unique . . . Be brave.”

20. Cut 10%.

“2nd draft = 1st draft – 10%” 

“every story and novel is collapsible to some degree. If you can’t get out ten per cent of it while retaining the basic story and flavor, you’re not trying very hard.” 

21. Confidently claim your indentity as a writer.

“Do you need someone to make you a paper badge with the word WRITER on it before you can believe you are one? God, I hope not.” 

22. Just start.

“The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.” 

23. Know what it’s all about.

“In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.” 

Of course, these aren’t all the Stephen King quotes about writing. What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

Welcome back to our monthly feature in which I highlight this month’s best new book releases that are especially beneficial for writers. Some fiction, some non-fiction, some craft-focused — all will be of interest to the writer who needs some more reading material. (Okay, I know all of our TBRs are way too long as it is, but new and shiny books always capture my attention!)

The Conflict Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Obstacles, Adversaries, and Inner Struggles by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

A guidebook for putting your characters into harm’s way! Seems fun to me. Publisher description:

Every story starts with a character who is motivated by a need and has a goal that can resolve it. Whether their objective is to find a life partner, bring a killer to justice, overthrow a cruel regime, or something else, conflict transforms a story premise into something fresh. Physical obstacles, adversaries, moral dilemmas, deep-seated doubts and personal struggles…these not only block a character’s external progress, they become a gateway for internal growth. The right conflict will build tension and high stakes, challenge characters as they traverse their arcs, and most importantly, keep readers emotionally invested from beginning to end.

The Best American Travel Writing 2021 edited by Padma Lakshmi

Entries in “The Best American” series are always worth reading, not just for entertainment but for studying the best of the best in articles and essays. Publisher description:

The essays in this year’s Best American Travel Writing are an antidote to the isolation of the year 2020, giving us views into experiences unlike our own and taking us on journeys we could not take ourselves. From the lively music of West Africa, to the rich culinary traditions of Muslims in Northwest China, to the thrill of a hunt in Alaska, this collection is a treasure trove of diverse places and cultures, providing the comfort, excitement, and joy of feeling elsewhere.

The Strategic Poet: Honing the Craft edited by Diane Lockward

Books on poetry craft seem harder to come by with each passing year. This book includes templates, examples, prompts, and everything else you need to keep you busy working on your poems for years. Publisher description:

The Strategic Poet: Honing the Craft focuses on the craft of poetry and is based on the belief that craft can be taught and the best teacher of craft is a good poem. This book assumes a knowledgeable reader, that is, one who already knows the language of poetry and already practices the craft. This book is organized into thirteen sections, each one devoted to a specific poetic strategy. While only thirteen strategies are used for organizational purposes, the reader will find many additional strategies referred to and discussed within the sections. There is a progression from one section to the next, but each section also stands alone, so the reader or teacher can follow the order of the Contents or move about freely among the sections.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

October is an insane month for big-name novelists. The best of the bunch, in my opinion, is the creative, inventive, totally original Cloud Cuckoo Land. Highly entertaining and highly teachable—Doerr is a great example of someone who breaks the norms of writing. Publisher description:

Set in Constantinople in the fifteenth century, in a small town in present-day Idaho, and on an interstellar ship decades from now, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness — with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.

Oscar Wilde: A Life by Matthew Sturgis

Biographies of writers are always fascinating. It’s been a long time since Wilde has been written about, so I’m glad to see this long overdue study take flight. Publisher description:

Drawing on material that has come to light in the past thirty years, including newly discovered letters, documents, first draft notebooks, and the full transcript of the libel trial, Matthew Sturgis meticulously portrays the key events and influences that shaped Oscar Wilde’s life, returning the man “to his times, and to the facts,” giving us Wilde’s own experience as he experienced it.

Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane by Paul Auster

Stephen Crane wrote some of my favorite stories and novellas of the Gilded Age. Can’t wait to read this fresh take on his life from Auster, who has previously only published fiction. Publisher description:

With Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster tells the extraordinary story of Stephen Crane, best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, who transformed American literature through an avalanche of original short stories, novellas, poems, journalism, and war reportage before his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age twenty-eight.

Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer

Few personalities are as dramatic and interesting to read about as Truman Capote. Publisher description:

Bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer delves into the years following the acclaimed publication of Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1958 and In Cold Blood in 1966, when Capote struggled with a crippling case of writer’s block. While en­joying all the fruits of his success, he was struck with an idea for what he was sure would be his most celebrated novel…one based on the re­markable, racy lives of his very, very rich friends.

Welcome to a brand new monthly feature in which I highlight this month’s best new book releases that are especially beneficial for writers. Some fiction, some non-fiction, some craft-focused — all will be of interest to the writer who needs some more reading material. (Okay, I know all of our TBRs are way too long as it is, but new and shiny books always capture my attention!)

September is fiction-heavy, but that won’t be the case every month. I already know that October is heavy on author bios. Anyways, here we go!

Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature by Farah Jasmine Griffin

Books about book are my favorite kinds of books. Publisher description:

A brilliant scholar imparts the lessons bequeathed by the Black community and its remarkable artists and thinkers.

Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase “read until you understand,” a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the magnificence of Black life. . . .

Here, she shares a lifetime of discoveries: the ideas that inspired the stunning oratory of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, the soulful music of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, the daring literature of Phillis Wheatley and Toni Morrison, the inventive artistry of Romare Bearden, and many more. Exploring these works through such themes as justice, rage, self-determination, beauty, joy, and mercy allows her to move from her aunt’s love of yellow roses to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Winter in America.”

Griffin entwines memoir, history, and art while she keeps her finger on the pulse of the present, asking us to grapple with the continuing struggle for Black freedom and the ongoing project that is American democracy. She challenges us to reckon with our commitment to all the nation’s inhabitants and our responsibilities to all humanity.

Bewilderment: A Novel by Richard Powers

New works by brilliant Pulitzer winners are always of interest to writers (or at least they are to me!). Enjoy the story; learn from the craft. Publisher description:

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain…

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?

Poet Warrior: A Memoir by Joy Harjo

Writerly memoirs are always a joy; this blend of genres promises to deliver big-time. Publisher description:

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as U.S. poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her poet-warrior road. A musical, kaleidoscopic, and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth—owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants, and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain, and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

See my note re: Bewilderment. Publisher description:

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked. To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. . . . Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time. . . . Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem. But mostly, it’s a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.

Inseparable: A Never-Before-Published Novel by Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir wrote across nearly all genres. Writers like that are especially interesting to me; how do they manage to write well in fiction, philosophy, memoir, etc.? This new novel from the late feminist is well worth studying, for the craft as much as for the story. Publisher description:

A never-before-published novel by the iconic Simone de Beauvoir of an intense and vivid girlhood friendship 

From the moment Sylvie and Andrée meet in their Parisian day school, they see in each other an accomplice with whom to confront the mysteries of girlhood. For the next ten years, the two are the closest of friends and confidantes as they explore life in a post-World War One France, and as Andrée becomes increasingly reckless and rebellious, edging closer to peril. . . .

Deemed too intimate to publish during Simone de Beauvoir’s life, Inseparable offers fresh insight into the groundbreaking feminist’s own coming-of-age; her transformative, tragic friendship with her childhood friend Zaza Lacoin; and how her youthful relationships shaped her philosophy. Sandra Smith’s vibrant translation of the novel will be long cherished by de Beauvoir devotees and first-time readers alike.

The Relaxed Author by Joanna Penn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre

The title alone makes me want to read this one. Any writer can relate, yeah (even if you aren’t an “author”). Publisher description:

There are plenty of books and tips on writing faster, learning more marketing tactics and strategies, trying to maximize your ranking, hitting the top of the charts, juicing the algorithms, and hacking different ad platforms. While these are all important things — which the authors themselves regularly write and talk about — it’s also important to recognize that your author journey is a marathon, and not a sprint.

Joanna Penn and Mark Leslie Lefebvre have been in the business long enough to see authors burning out and leaving the writing life because they turned what they love into a hamster wheel of ever more production and marketing tasks they hate. It doesn’t have to be this way.

This book is a collection of tips on how to be a more relaxed author — and return to the love that brought you to writing in the first place.

About a month ago I promised that we were working on some new resources for you. We’ve been chugging along behind the scenes and I’m happy to say that today we’re launching our book outline template.

If you’re writing a book, the importance of an outline can’t be denied. The benefits are just too numerous to ignore: you’ll improve your book’s continuity, you won’t have to fight writer’s block as much (because your next chapter is mapped out!), the writing will almost inevitably be faster, and it frees you up to actually spend time on the craft versus the what of the book.

Not all outlines are created equally, though. Today, we’re releasing our non-fiction template. We also have a fiction template available.

It’s all set up in Google Docs for you. Click the button above, fill out the short form, and you’ll be emailed a link to a view-only Google Doc. (We ask for your phone number only for our internal records; we will not sell it to a junk call/text company.)

You’ll copy/paste the template into your own Docs and get working. What I love about this outline is that it includes the front and end matter that’s often so annoying to put together — introduction, acknowledgements, notes, etc.

This book outline template also helps you map out nearly every paragraph of the important stuff — your content! Use as much or as little outlining as you like, but you should definitely, at the very least, have an idea of the main thrust of each chapter and how to get there.

Give it a shot. Even if you’ve only been noodling with the idea of writing a book, this tool can help crystallize your idea and catalyze your motivation. If you’ve been writing for ages and don’t seem to be making headway, an outline can give you the push you need to finally finish.

Either way, I hope it’s a great help for your writing process.

I studied public relations and journalism back in college (shoutout to Drake U!). As you can imagine, there was a lot of writing involved: press releases, newspaper articles, client pitches, etc., etc. We were writing nearly every day. And yet, I never really thought of writing as a career. Sure, the skill would come in handy, but it would certainly never be a primary job function.

At the time, journalism seemed like a dying industry. Public relations seemed more about marketing and business than writing. Writing and publishing books seemed so far out of the realm of possibility that I never even considered it.

But here I am, a dozen years later, doing what I love to do. The possibilities when it comes to writing are so much greater than we tend to think. Whether you want a career in wordsmithing or simply want to gain mastery over your favorite hobby, this field has so much to offer.

Here at The Write Life, as we enter a new season, the team wants to know what this site means to you. What sort of content are you looking for when you venture to thewritelife.com or open one of our emails? What does your ideal writing life look like?

We are here to serve our readers, so the more we know about your writing goals, hopes, challenges, hobbies, and career aspirations, the better we can do that.

Does the write life, for you, mean:

• Full-time income from freelance?
• A fiction writing career?
• Selling even more books?
• Having a successful side hustle?
• Fulfilling a lifelong passion?
• Finally finishing your book?
• Getting a book published (or doing it yourself)?
• Finding a career in copywriting?

Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Whether it’s one of these, all of these, or a dream not listed, let us know in the comments! Next week, we’ll feature your responses in order to provide motivation, inspiration, and hope for all of us writers out there—myself included.

You might have noticed that The Write Life has been on a content break for the last couple months. In mid-June, The Write Life joined the Selfpublishing.com platform of sites and resources dedicated to writing, publishing, freelance, marketing, and more. 

The vision for the Selfpublishing.com platform began back in 2015 when Chandler Bolt founded Self-Publishing School, an organization dedicated exclusively to changing the world through the power of books. The company provides education and coaching services to folks who are on the verge of writing or self-publishing a book, but need a little extra help getting across the finish line. Over the years, the vision has only grown (with a goal of helping self-publish over 100,000 books and impacting 120 million lives!), as have the number of resources available to help you do it.

Here at The Write Life, we’ve been ironing out some new content, among other backend systems/process changes, in order to bring you the best possible experience as a reader. 

As the new Managing Editor, I want to let you know that I’m fully committed to providing top-notch content centered around helping you become a better writer so that you can achieve your writing goals. I’ll be working with world-class contributors to bring you a steady stream of articles that are guaranteed to both inspire and provide practical tips that can be implemented into your writing routine ASAP. 

In the coming months we’ll also be revamping some of our free resources and ebooks, rolling out new trainings, and generally doing everything we can to bring value to The Write Life readers. 

If you haven’t already, get signed up for our newsletter in order to get new content, valuable articles from the archives, and those jazzed up resources right to your inbox:

I’m honored to be guiding this ship and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead for The Write Life! 

-Jeremy