'Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart'

I'm declaring a writer's strike ... And maybe this is why.

* There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. -- Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith

* The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. -- Ana*s Nin

* What a writer wants to do is not what he does. -- Jorge Luis Borges

* Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty. -- Rosemary Mahoney

* If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do. -- William Zinsser

* Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. -- William Wordsworth

* Easy reading is damn hard writing. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne

* Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. -- Gene Fowler

* A writer and nothing else: A man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. -- John K. Hutchens, New York Herald Tribune, 10 September 1961

* Every writer I know has trouble writing. -- Joseph Heller

* How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. -- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 19 August 1851

* One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen. -- Leo Tolstoy

* Writing is thinking on paper. -- William Zinsser

* Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators. -- Olin Miller

Enjoy your week ...

Timberly is a staff writer at the Greene County Daily World. She can be reached by e-mail at tferree@gcdailyworld.com or by phone at 1-800-947-4487 or (812) 847-4487.