Top 1200 Bad Writing Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.

Sometimes I write, but once it's done, I usually find my writing to be so bad that I hide it somewhere and never look at it again.

I also watch a lot of really bad television when I'm writing, "Like Dancing With the Stars," with my daughter.

I think that when you're writing plays, and I think it's also true with novels, it helps to have an ear for the music of language, for what we call poetry, for the sound effects and the way that the sound can produce sensual feeling at odds with or consonant with the content of the work. Your work is also gorgeous writing. It's very unfortunate when you open a novel that everybody's loving and it's just, you know, an excruciatingly bad sentence.

Honestly, all of 'Breaking Bad' was the best television experience of my entire life - the writing, the crew, the other actors.

The dirty secret of art is you don't have to show people your bad writing. That's what we have the delete key for.

I tried writing a song and it wasn't very good. I sung it to my mom and she told me it was bad - but I was eight, so it's okay.

I don't like characters who are either good or bad. I just don't experience that in life, so my writing hasn't evolved that way.

Writing for adults and writing for young people is really not that different. As a reporter, I have always tried to write as clearly and simply as possible. I like clean, unadorned writing. So writing for a younger audience was largely an exercise in making my prose even more clear and direct, and in avoiding complicated digressions.

This distraction is what one wants, which is very, very bad for the muse, because the muse hates not being in the line of sight. It's no longer an external conflict, like, oh, I have all these demands and I don't like them. The split is in the self.?This may explain why, when I was in Santa Barbara before I went to Singapore and then now to Hong Kong, there was a writing moment when I was writing a poem a day. I had never done that before.

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don't feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you're wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.

When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have to do.

I have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. [...] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [...] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [...] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work.

To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.

And you're a bad boy?" I asked. Ollie's grin was contagious. "Oh, I'm a bad, bad boy." Cam shot his friend a look. "Yeah, as in bad at spelling, math, english, cleaning up after yourself, talking to people, and I could go on.

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.

On the craft level, writing for children is not so different from writing for adults. You still have to have a story that moves forward. You still have to have the tools of the trade down. The difference arises in the knowledge of who you're writing for. This isn't necessary true of writing for adults.

When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part.

The best friend a man can have is reading and writing, and the bad ones to avoid are Go and chess and flute and pipe.

From what I understand about Shakespeare - which isn't a lot - there was no copyright law when he was writing. He sampled at will, and it wasn't seen as a bad thing.

People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes

If you ever watch me at theatre rehearsals, you will know what a bad actress I am. I am bad... bad... bad... and then, by opening night, it all just falls into place.

People think bigger movies are bad, and that's just not true - there's bad big films, and there's bad little ones. The bad big ones have to make their money back, so they'll push them down your throat, but the little ones just disappear if they're bad.

I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. ... I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14-to meet women. ... If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. ... My songs are like my kids.

I've been in some bad TV shows and suffered through so much poor writing.

If you are making money writing, you are doing great. If you can support yourself writing, you are a success. I don't care if you're writing textbooks or Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for weighty publications of world renown: If you're writing and it's paying the bills, consider yourself a successful writer.

You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.

If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed. You fail only if you stop writing.

There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad word.' You know bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions.

When the news is slow, or when there's just so many other responsibilities bearing down on me that I don't have the time to do it right, that's when it gets frustrating. As an artist, you just don't wanna put bad work out. So when you have to do it seven days a week, you're just gonna have some bad days and bad weeks and bad months and bad years.

[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.

I definitely have a preference for writing anti-heroes and bad guys, especially when they have motivations that the average 'good' person can understand and get behind.

There are many ways to improve your writing. Here's the bad news: 1.They all require hard work. 2.There is no magic bullet.

My idea of what's good and bad and right and wrong is maybe greyer than most, and I like writing about that.

As nobody can possibly tell me whether one's writing is bad or good, the only certain value is one's own pleasure. I am sure of that.

Yet we didn't fix anything. Our roads are bad, our bridges are bad, our tunnels are bad, our schools are bad, our hospitals are bad.

Writing's not precious to me. It's not a thing that requires specific environment. You know, it's my job. Just like anybody with a job, you have to do your job when you don't feel like it, regardless of how good or bad the conditions are, regardless of how good or bad you might feel on any particular day.

I think that writers are best served by sticking to their writing. Not having loads of theories about the best way to position the writing. I think that if the writing is good and the point of view is strong, the writing is going to take care of itself.

To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits while watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste.

Writing music is such a freeing exercise, and it's really nice to play in that world of being confident, vengeful - getting back at all the bad boyfriends.

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing.

When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don't mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It's the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

We all are who we are. We're not necessarily good, and we're not necessarily bad. So much television, in the writing, is so one-dimensional, in that aspect, where you have your good guys and you have your bad guys.

When people speak to me of the torment of writing, I can think only of what it was like before I wrote: once writing meant writing and not thinking about writing, I knew nothing of any torment.

As far as writing, I like watching bad movies. Nothing stops me in my tracks more than watching a great film like 'The Godfather' or 'Dog Day Afternoon' or 'The Graduate.' You watch one of those, and you never want to write again. Whereas with bad movies, it makes you think, If that counts, I certainly could write.

I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.

I enjoyed writing in school. I don't know that I was all that good at it in school. I worked at it later. I feel comfortable writing now. I enjoy writing now. I suspect, like most college students, I viewed writing then to be more tedious.

Bad writing as a conscious goal is liberating for students: They are freed to be creative in a new and different way.

If you can stand to wait 24 hours before you decide the fate of what you have written - either good or bad - you're more likely to see that invisible thing that is invisible for the first few days in any new writing. We just can't know what all is in a sentence until there are several sentences to follow it. Pages of writing need more pages in order to be known, chapters need more chapters.

Journalism is very much public writing, writing with an audience in mind, writing for publication, and frequently writing quickly. And I know that when I worked daily journalism it really affected my patience with literature, which I think requires reflection, and a different kind of engagement.

It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.

If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.

To develop your own voice, you have to keep writing a ton, and this is something where I think Twitter is helpful. I use it to write a ton of jokes. You have to write a ton of bad stuff before you know what you're good at. And that's what some people I think have trouble with, the thought of getting past the bad stuff.

I'm fond of online testimonials: people writing about their experiences with ghosts or drugs or bad boyfriends.

When you're in the throes of writing, I find, the lessons you've casually imparted to others are not in the forefront of your mind. Which may be good or bad. Probably both.

Jokes that are gratuitously offensive are synonymous with bad writing to me. I'm offended as a writer first and as a person second.

You know, I think a lot of times what happens when we as actors know we're playing a bad guy is we get into bad guy mode. You know what, man? In real life, bad people do good things too and good people do bad things. So you don't necessarily have to be the stereotypical bad guy to still do bad things.