10 Quotes That Will Put Your Butt In Gear To Start Writing

Quotes often serve as my creative fuel. They have a magical ability to capture the essence of an idea in a sentence or two, which is a concept that has always astounded me.

The inside of my writing notebook is covered with quotes from writers throughout the ages: Seneca, Epictetus, W. Somerset Maugham, T.S. Eliot, Steven Pressfield, Ryan Holiday. Their ideas remind me that although writing is challenging, it is also powerful.

Words have the power to inspire action — to ignite rebellions, encourage peace, and evoke courage.

The following ten quotes will put your butt in gear to start writing.

1. “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” -Stephen King

It’s encouraging to hear that even one of the greatest writers in history still operates in fear. The blank page is horrifying even for the king of horror. But once you put pen to paper, fear begins to dissipate. You realize that the only way to finish writing an article or book is to start writing one. The key is to start.

2. “Talk depletes us. Talking and doing fight for the same resources.” -Ryan Holiday

We all have friends who talk about things they someday want to do: travel, write, quit their job, start a podcast, create a business. Do you ever get frustrated when listening to others’ dreams? I do. I suspect that the more someone talks about something they want to do, the less likely they are to actually do it. You can choose speech or action. Which do you choose?

3. “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.” -W. Somerset Maugham

Before I started writing, I thought authors only wrote when inspired by creative insight. I don’t know why I believed that. After all, I knew product designers didn’t only create new designs when they were in a “creative mood.” I knew public speakers didn’t only give speeches on days when they were feeling particularly articulate. I’m not sure why I thought writing was unlike any other field in that respect. (Hint: It’s not.)

4. “You don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it.” -Anne Lamott

This is how it works. This is why Maugham said he finds inspiration at 9 am every day. If you put in the work, you’ll eventually unearth brilliance. Sometimes you need to write in order to find out what you wanted to write about. It’s strange, but it’s true. Writing is a process of discovery. Picking up your pen is like picking up a shovel and starting to dig in an open field. Who knows what you’ll find?

5. “Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at 15 to write several novels.” -May Sarton

It’s tempting to think you don’t know enough right now to create something of value. Sarton’s quote is a great reminder that every one of us has sufficient life experience to write something meaningful. As I wrote about in a recent story, writers can find inspiration everywhere. Not only do you know enough now to start writing, but you will never run out of ideas if you keep your eyes open to the world around you.

6. “I don’t complain about the lack of time…what little I have will go far enough. Today — this day — will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay siege to the gods and shake up the world.” -Seneca

You can create a great life by living a series of great days. All you can control is how you spend your next 24 hours — or even your next five minutes. What can you do today to “lay siege to the gods and shake up the world”?

7. “Work is finding yourself alone at the track when the weather kept everyone else indoors. Work is pushing through the pain and crappy first drafts and prototypes. It is ignoring whatever plaudits others are getting, and more importantly, ignoring whatever plaudits you may be getting. Because there is work to be done. Work doesn’t want to be good. It is made so, despite the headwind.” -Ryan Holiday

Anyone can sit on the couch and crank through episodes of Mad Men. Anyone can come home from a tough day at the office and plop down on the couch to scroll through Facebook or Instagram for an hour. The tough choices you make will be the ones that set you apart from the masses. And once you’ve made a tough choice and decided to write, don’t let minor success blind you from achieving major success. Okay, so you got 1K claps on your Medium article — so what? Write the next one.

8. “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” -Ernest Hemingway

Writing is an iterative craft. Perfection is impossible, but improvement is inevitable. Keep writing. Focus on writing every day, and you will continue to improve. Eventually, others will notice.

9. “There are no radical creative choices that do not carry with them an inherent risk of equally radical failure. You cannot do anything great without aggressively courting your own limits and the limits of your ideas.” -Aisha Tyler

Are you scared of writing? Good. That means you’re doing it the right way. Live on the precipice of failure and you can be certain that you will accomplish something of substance. Write about challenging topics, controversial topics, and complex topics. Test your personal limits.

10. “But if we love writing, if we enjoy writing, if we write from something deep within ourselves, then that will always be enough. That we wrote will always have been worth it, even if no one pays our writing any attention — or even if they hate and criticize us for it.” -Christy Waltz

This quote comes from another writer here on Medium — someone I started following through The Writing Cooperative. Christy wrote these lines in her story “It Makes Me Tremble,” an article that as of this date has less than 500 claps. I guarantee that Christy has no idea how much this quote impacted me and potentially other readers as well. That’s the beauty of writing. Your work has the potential of impacting hundreds of people you’ve never met, and you may never find out. And even if your work isn’t noticed by anyone else, the writing alone will have been worth it. The process of writing itself makes us better, more thoughtful humans.