Professional Writers Quotes

My only problem with fans is when they turn pro. For example, when all the professional writers were fired by DC in the '60s, they brought in a generation of comic book fans who would have paid to have written these stories.

For sure, without question, the writing is better on TV pound for pound than movies because the businesses have changed so much. So all the great writers would rather work for TV, and they do.

I'll bet you $10 right now that there are an awful lot of literary writers who started a long time ago and now they find themselves in this place where secretly they feel trapped. And you know what they really read for fun? They read crime fiction.

Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience.

The only literary men are those who have to work at it.

There is not alternative to speechwriters. You can’t run for president and write your own speeches.

Several factors besides skill are more significant in professional writers than in most amateurs. One is love of the surface level of language: the sound of it; the taste of it on the tongue; what it can be made to do in virtuosic passages that exist only for their own sake, like cadenzas in baroque concerti. Writers in love with their tools are not unlike surgeons obsessed with their scalpels, or Arctic sled racers who sleep among their dogs even when they don't have to.

What I adore is supreme professionalism. I’m bored by writers who can write only when it’s raining.

Philadelphia's a good science-fiction town. There are many professional writers here, like Michael Swanwick, Tom Purdom, Gregory Frost, Victoria McManus and others. There are professional artists such as Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger and Susan McAninley.

I've been really lucky to work with some of the best writers in the business.

If you chase the market, it's not going to come to you. You have to have faith in yourself. I think one of the differences in what I call 'civilians' and 'authors' is that we have an antenna hat buzzing all the time.

We have a full writers' room, and with something like 'MyMusic,' we've scripted it out with professional writers. There is some very basic improv from the actors, but everything is very to the letter, so it's easy to edit down to an episode. There are fun little things an actor might throw in there.

Amateurs... venture into scenes that a writer with more experience (and more professional concern) would bypass or eschew altogether.

I remember our first interviews at the Capitol tower. These magazine people were asking us things like 'What's your favorite color?' and 'What do you like to do on a date?' I'd ask, 'Where are you from?' and they'd say, 'Fave' or 'Rave' or whatever. We wondered, 'When do the real writers get here?'

If money can't be made reporting and writing articles, then professionals simply can't do it anymore. Unless we adopt the position that the amateur blogosphere is really capable of taking on the role that the 'New York Times' and CNN play, then we do need solutions for paying for content.

Traditionally games never used professional writers to create their narrative, so there's definitely a residual feeling that hiring a proper writer is somewhat of a luxury, rather than a necessity. Like a feng shui consultant.

When I was in middle school, the librarian there was secretary for a couple of groups of professional writers. She introduced me to Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, and I became very friendly with them over a period of two years. Both of them were very generous with their time, guidance and advice.

If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.

There are two kinds of writers: hustlers and sanctimonious hustlers.

There were probably, what, 300 science-fiction members in the SFWA, of whom probably a hundred were active members in the sense that they were selling something every year, or every couple years.

I detest professional anythings but particularly professional writers. Most of them today are just garbage collectors.

Writers and musicians are very similar in that the chances of making a life in either field are so infinitesimal. And once you're in, the chances of staying viable are difficult. But there is something incredibly different about performing in front of a live audience, as opposed to sitting at your desk typing.

We have the best writers in the business [on The Office].

The CWC is a professional organization for professional writers. Non-published writers are welcome as associate members.

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.