Elizabeth George Quotes

Most people won't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like anything else.

Like most art forms, writing is part instinct and part craft. The craft part is the part that can be taught, and that can make a crucial difference to lots of writers.

Part of being a writer is just getting it in your bones, getting the muscle memory down, just doing it.

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

Writing is a trade ... which is learned by writing.

Writing is like a sport - you only get better if you practice

I think writing well takes a little bit of talent and an awful lot of work.

Every story I write is different. Some are hard. Some aren't. 'Chronicle' was tremendously easy. I have a hard time comparing my process on different things, but I will say this: The more you write, the better you get at it. That's one of the few things that's markedly true.

I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.

I have a huge respect for writers and realise that this is not an area that I find easy. I doubt that I would have the patience in front of a blank sheet of paper to become a writer.

The task of a writer consists of being able to make something out of an idea.

My idea of writing is of unflinching and continual effort, somehow trying to find the right words until you reach a point where you can make no further progress and you either have something or you don't.

I think that if you have a knack for storytelling, and you work really hard at it, you'll have a chance to tap into something deep. But the fact remains that good sentences are hard won. Any writer worth a lick knows constructing a sentence, a paragraph, or a chapter is hard work.

One of the things I learnt over the years is that there is a craft to writing, like there is a craft to acting. I hadn't done my apprenticeship as a writer. I did try to be a writer for hire but I'm not any good at it.

I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.

If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.

I really wasn't equipped to be a writer when I left Oxford. But then I set out to learn. I've always had the highest regard for the craft. I've always felt it was work.

I do love writing. It doesn't come to me as readily as I think acting does. I think acting is in my instincts. Writing is a craft that I work very hard at. And I have to train and continue to develop.

Write for yourself, not for a perceived audience. If you do, you'll mostly fall flat on your face, because it's impossible to judge what people want. And you have to read. That's how you learn what is good writing and what is bad. Then the main thing is application. It's hard work.

I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the 80s developing my craft as a writer.

Talent is required, but much of writing is a matter of craft, which develops with time, attention, patience and practice, like playing an instrument or learning to dance.

There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.

It takes practice to do anything unique within this field, period, in writing, practice doing anything unique in writing.

I think the way to be a writer is to experience things, certainly, and be open to things, but at some point to become dedicated to the craft of writing and to create a stable environment for that writing to occur in.

In the most self-protective of ways, I don't think about the reader when I'm writing - I just think about the story.