Thread by @stewfortier

When I feel stuck with my writing, I've found inspirational quotes rarely help – they subtly make me feel like struggling is rare.

I've started to compile a list of anti-inspirational quotes to remind myself I'm in good company when things suck.

Here are a few favorites:

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

– George Orwell

“I write the way women have babies. You don’t know it’s going to be like that. If you did, there’s no way you would go through with it.”

– Toni Morrison

“Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.”

– Norman Mailer

“When I sit down at the desk I feel no better than someone who falls and breaks both legs in the middle of the traffic of the Place de l’Opéra.”

– Franz Kafka

“When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.”

– Kurt Vonnegut

“I discard every page, rewrite it, and throw discarded sheets of conversation about the floor… From rubbing my forehead I have worn an enormous hole in it, which bleeds.”

– Elizabeth Bowen

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

– Thomas Mann

“Few people can be as tortured by writing as I am.”

– Virginia Woolf

/ Fin.

Reply with your best anti-inspirational writing quote and let's co-create the world's most depressing writing thread. 😹

Also, shout-out to @TomJWhiteIV for unearthing a few of these quotes.