The writer’s life can be an odd undertaking, generally waffling between moments of euphoria and despair, then back again in seconds. If my editor could edit my life the way she does my books, I think we’d both be happier.

The euphoria comes when the words flow, the characters cooperate, and the dialogue smacks as realistic.

The despair comes when the opposite happens.

However, a deadline is generally looming, so I can’t curl into a fetal position and watch TV. I have to keep moving on.

It’s at those times, I turn to my growing list of motivational quotes.

I share some favorites here for everyone, not just my writer friends. Why? Because any creative undertaking can require motivation and encouragement, and we’re ALL blessed with some sort of talent.

1. I write for the same reason I breathe-because if I didn’t, I would die. – Isaac Asimov
2. A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. – Richard Bach
3. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. – Ray Bradbury
4. You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it. – Neil Gaiman
5. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of 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
6. Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. – Anne Lamott
7.  Start early and work hard. A writer’s apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he’s almost ready to begin. That takes a while. – David Eddings
8. 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
9. If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. – Toni Morrison
10. You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. – Ray Bradybury
11. If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster. – Isaac Asimov
12. When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’ -Stephen King
13. To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself. – Anne Rice
14. Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. – Robert Heinlein
15. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. – Henry David Thoreau
16. And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. – Sylvia Plath
17. Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. – Mark Twain
18. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. – Albert Einstein
19. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. – Henry David Thoreau
20. Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any. – Orson Scott Card
21. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. – Ernest Hemingway
22. It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way. – Ernest Hemingway
23. A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God. – Sidney Sheldon
24. You can’t learn anything from experiences you’re not having. – Louis L’Amour
25. People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn’t like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that’s all there is to it. – Harlan Ellison
26. I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged. – Erica Jong
27. Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose…not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.  – Anne Sullivan Macy
28. If you wait for inspiration to write; you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter. – Dan Poynter
29. Mistakes are the portals of discovery. – James Joyce
30. Be like a postage stamp. Stick to it until you get there. – Harvey MacKay
31. Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. – Thomas A. Edison
32. It is never too late to become what you might have been. – George Elliot
33. An obstacle is something you see when  you take your eye off the goal. – Sam Horn
34. If you want something you never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done. – Bill Gates
35. I never grow a wishbone where a backbone ought to be. – Clementine Paddleford
36. I don’t waste time thinking, “Am I doing it right?” I say, “Am I doing it?” – Georgette Mosbacher

—If you haven’t had a chance to check out my book series, The Crossing Trilogy, I hope you will! The first book, Crossing into the Mystic, can be ordered through your local bookstore, or via Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Book #2, Edging through the Darkness, will be released May 2015. Thank you to the many who have taken a moment to leave a review on Amazon or recommend it to friends.