Vikram Seth Quotes

The only strategy I know of is to write every day, which I don't always do, because sometimes I just can't, for various reasons that seem out of my control.

I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.

I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the discipline that it takes to sit down in front of a typewriter or computer every single day, whether it's going well or not going well.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.

I write all the time, whether I feel like it or not. I never get inspired unless I'm already writing.

There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.

I now have to find a reason to write, every single day.

It was my great problem to solve: how to write a book, you know. And after you write one, you have to write another to prove to yourself you can do it again.

If four or five days go by, and I haven't written anything, I feel incomplete.

I don't believe in writer's block. Most of writer's block is having too much time on your hands. My mantra is that you can always edit a bad page; you can't edit a blank page.

I'm so grateful to grab hold of something that wants to be a play. It doesn't happen very often. I don't have unwritten plays waiting for their turn.

I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was good to be task - based for a while. I just came downstairs each day, picked the one I was going to do that day, and wrote.

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

I have nothing like a writing routine. I sometimes have trouble buckling down to write at home.

Read everything. Write all the time. And if you can do anything else that gives you equal pleasure and allows you to sleep soundly at night, do that instead. The writing life is an odd one, to say the least.

You won't make a living writing until you learn to write when you don't want to.

I knew I was a writer; I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know what to write.

Write every day; never give up; it's supposed to be difficult; try to find some pleasure and reward in the act of writing, because you can't look for praise from editors, readers, or critics. In other words, tips that are much easier to give than to take.

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

The writing part of my life never changes, because that's just when the inspiration comes.

I always have a story in my head that needs to be written, or at least I think I do. But I usually can't find the time to write it.

No matter how many awards you've won or how many sales you've got, come the next book it's still a blank sheet of paper and you're still panicking like hell that you've got nothing new to say.

I can't write every day. I have to skip a day in between. If I try to do it every day, nothing comes.

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led.