We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the best writing advice they'd ever heard. Here are some of their most inspiring replies.
2. "You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say."
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
Suggested by Allison E., Facebook
3. "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."
—Mary Heaton Vorse
Suggested by justanotheroriginal
4. "Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."
―Neil Gaiman
Suggested by oswin42
6. "Get off Facebook."
Suggested by Ana R., Facebook
7. "Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words."
—Mark Twain
Suggested by Michele M., Facebook
8. "You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing."
—Amy Poehler
Suggested by Trisha S., Facebook
10. "Your goal isn't to make an extraordinary story ordinary, but an ordinary one extraordinary."
Suggested by Anna-Kate N., Facebook
11. "The first draft of anything is shit."
—Ernest Hemingway
Suggested by Sam G, Facebook
12. "Thinking is abstract. Knowing and believing are intangible. Your story will always be stronger if you just show the physical actions and details of your characters and allow your reader to do the thinking and knowing. And loving and hating. Don't tell your reader: Lisa hated Tom. Instead, make your case like a lawyer in court, detail by detail."
—Chuck Palahniuk
Suggested by Jerika C, Facebook
14. "Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write."
—William Faulkner
Suggested by Erin La Rosa
15. "Adding a serial killer in your story makes it interesting."
—Libba Bray at the Austin Teen Book Festival
Suggested by Allyah H., Facebook
16. "Write what you know."
—Mark Twain
Suggested by Elaine H, Facebook
18. "To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
I wish for you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.
I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.
May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise.
Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."
—Ray Bradbury
Suggested by justanotheroriginal
20. "The more you read, the better you read; the more you write, the better you write; the more you write, the better you read; the more you read, the better you write."
Suggested by Zacharias Wayne Vega-Thornton, Facebook
21. "Allow yourself to write badly, then once finished go back and make it better."
Suggested by David Allan, Facebook
22. "Every sentence must lead logically into the next one."
Suggested by Amy S., Facebook
23. "Oh, and get rid of your adverbs!"
—Stephen King
Suggested by Karen J., Facebook
25. "Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world."
—Susan Sontag
Suggested by Erin La Rosa
26. "Write everyday. Don't worry about it being crap, WRITE it anyway."
Suggested by Forest L, Facebook
27. "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
Suggested by Rashmi H., Facebook