As I've been busy this week with preparations for the Big Model Train Show, I haven't done any writing for a while. I always feel frustrated and useless when a period of time elapses and I've not been able to write for whatever reason. I find it helpful to read about how others relate to the act and occupation of writing. It reminds me that other people also wrestle with the difficulties associated with creating stories. Here are some astute and brilliant comments about writers and writing:

The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air.  All I must do is find it, and copy it.  ~Jules Renard, "Diary," February 1895

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 is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.  ~Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947

"People sometimes ask me when I'm going to write a 'real' book - for adults. I give them a big smile and tell them, 'When my stories are no longer good enough for chldren, then I'll write for adults." - Verla Kay

"A professional writier is an amateur who didn't quit." - Richard Bach.

“I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what.” -  Madeleine L'Engle