Struggling with writer’s block? Afraid to take a writing plunge? Or, even worse, crippled by that fear that you’re not good enough to be a writer? We’ve all been there. Seriously, all of us—including the best writers of all time. So take a moment to read their advice and get inspired and empowered (then get back to writing!)
1.) 
2.) Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
– James Joyce
3.) The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
– Mark Twain
4.) The first draft of anything is shit.
– Ernest Hemingway
5.) I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.
– Anne Frank
6.) Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e. do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meeting on those days.
– J.K. Rowling
7.) And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worse enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
– Sylvia Plath
8.) Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
– Natalie Goldberg
9.) I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.
– Joss Whedon
10.) 
11.) The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
– Agatha Christie
12.) If it’s still in your mind, it is worth taking the risk.
– Paulo Coelho
13.) Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.
– Ray Bradbury
14.) Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
– Barbara Kingsolver
15.) If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.
– Margaret Atwood
16.) Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
– William Faulkner
17.) I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.
– Joan Didion
18.) A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, or because everything she does is golden. A writer is a writer because, even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.
– Junot Diaz
19.) You don’t write because you want to say something. You write because you have something to say.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
20.) 
21.) We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
– Anaïs Nin
22.) Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose…not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.
– Anne Sullivan Macy
23.) Start before you’re ready.
– Steven Pressfield
24.) A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.
– Richard Bach
25.) The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.
– Anne Tyler
26.) Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
– Pyotr Tchaikovsky
27.) Write your first draft with you heart. Rewrite with your head.
– Mike Rich
28.) First, find out what your hero wants. Then just follow him.
– Ray Bradbury
29.) When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
– Raymond Chandler
And, of course:
30.) 
Has this been inspiring, readers? Are there any other quotes you’d like to add to the list?
