Deborah Moggach Quotes

Producing words isn't a problem for me. And I usually write two books at a time. When one horse gets winded, you jump on the other.

I don't drive, so one of my assistants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wall telling me how much time I have left, and how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work on. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you're not thinking about it.

Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night.

You can't be a writer if you don't write, it's just that simple.

The book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging. And I wonder if the greatest challenges was to keep pressing into it when I had never been here before. I felt like Abraham - being called to something that he didn't know how to get to.

That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down.

Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.

I have so many books to write now. So I'll write from home. Sometimes I'm writing in the office too, in my cubicle. It looks like a mess. It doesn't look like anybody uses the spot.

When I'm really plugged in I find it difficult to write. It's like digging a well. If you make a void, something moves in to fill it. Writing books is like that. It's mostly about freeing up time, doing nothing, and in that time some writing starts to happen. We need to figure out how to maintain those voids.

Writing is just work-there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes-it's still just work.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

I only wish I could write with both hands, so as not to forget one thing while I am saying another.

I am a night creature, and I write from midnight till dawn, secluded in my office and surrounded by my collection of dragons (I have 400 of them). I only use Macintosh computers, which I name in dynastic order. Right now I'm using MacDragon 5. Only the devil is able to decipher my handwriting.

Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year.

Choose your tools carefully, but not so carefully that you get uptight or spend more time at the stationery store than at your writing table.

When you get an idea, go and write. Don't waste it in conversation.

I always write a story in one sitting.

If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less.

Finally, if you want to write, you have to just shut up, pick up a pen, and do it. I'm sorry there are no true excuses. This is our life. Step forward. Maybe it's only for ten minutes. That's okay. To write feels better than all the excuses.

Writing with other people is the only way I ever really work. In some ways it's great because it's helpful to someone pull you out of the loop.

I don't want to blame anybody, but I just want to tell you that the process of writing is antisocial, so on the days that you have something really important to write, go from lying down directly to your notepad or your computer. Do not talk.

I've known several cases of writers who decide to write about something and they research the hell out of it and when they're ready to write, they can't move because they are so burdened. I start writing. Whatever I need somehow comes to hand.

If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write. If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all. Wait for them. Put down little ideas no matter how insignificant they are. But do not feel, any more, guilty about idleness and solitude.

My writing process has changed because it's harder to find uninterrupted time.

You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.