Professional Writing Quotes

• Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper.

  John Dos Passos

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

  John Dos Passos (1988). “John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose”

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• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Writing, Editing

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

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• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Bad Ass, Typewriters

  "Exclusive: Never-Before-Seen Photos from Hemingway's Childhood" by James Joiner, www.esquire.com. October 24, 2013.

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• The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

  Leo Rosten

  Writing, Story Writers, Helping

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• Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Writing

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• The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

  Robert Benchley

  Writing, Typewriters, Ribbons

  Chips off the old Benchley (1949) "Learn to Write"

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• A lot of people, myself included, are excited about blogging and stuff like that, citizen journalism, but I do remind people that no matter how excited we are, there's no substitute for professional writing, no substitute for professional editing, and no substitute for professional fact-checking.

  Craig Newmark

  Writing, Editing, People

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• I used to love to write. As a child I used to write all the time. I loved to write up until the second I got my first professional writing job. It turns out it's not that I hate to write. I hate, simply, to work.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Jobs, Children, Hate

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• My very first professional writing credit was on a movie called The Dunwich Horror, and Roger Corman was the executive producer.

  Curtis Hanson

  Writing, Credit, Roger

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either.

  David Foster Wallace

  Book, Writing, Paradox

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• I suppose we think euphemistically that all writers write because they have something to say that is truthful and honest and pointed and important. And I suppose I subscribe to that, too. But God knows when I look back over thirty years of professional writing, I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything that's important. Some things are literate, some things are interesting, some things are classy, but very damn little is important.

  Rod Serling

  Writing, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.rodserling.com

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• I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing, Literary and Dramatic.

  Shelley Berman

  Teaching, Writing, Dramatic

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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