Dick Cavett Quotes

Writers displace their anxiety on to the tools of the trade. It's better to say that you haven't got the right pencil than to say you can't write, or to blame your computer for losing your chapter than face up to your feeling that it's better lost.

When it comes time to sit down and write the next book, you're deathly afraid that you're not up to the task. That was certainly the case with me after Snow Falling on Cedars.

It's way easier to write for other people. Yourself isn't in it. When you write for yourself, you overthink, and you become paranoid. When you write for others, it isn't about you.

I always had a superstitious fear of setting up a too well-designed writing place and then finding that the writing had absconded.

I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I'm on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I'll sit down at the desk and discover that what I've written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination.

My verses stand gawping a bit. I never get used to this. They've lived here long enough.

There was a terrible fear for me when I started writing, which was that if you'd been denied unbelievably tumultuous experience, you didn't have permission to write.

With the first novel, I had to tell myself, 'No one is ever going to read it, so you might as well just write it.' With the second, I was pretty sure someone was going to read it.

Every time I've written a book, I'm like, 'Oh, it's so different from the last one. Are they going to like it?'

I've never had a writer's block, but still I think: 'Is it going to happen this time?' You never know what you're going to get; you just put your fingers on the keys and hope.

I think at first I didn't tell anyone I was writing something because I found so tedious the people who did.

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.

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest.

I'm such a coward that unless I get a good writer, I don't want to make a picture.

I'm fairly competant as a director and actor, but I am Mr. Neurotic as a writer. I just don't have enough confidence in my abilities to take criticism well. I take it personally. Start with 'It's a masterpiece,' and then tell me what you think could be changed.

The whole excitement for writing anything is quite intense. And for a day or two, you think you've done everything extremely well. The problems start on the third day, and continues for the rest of your life.

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book.

All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.

I have turned away from the thought of writing fiction in the past through what I suppose is, actually, fear. The direct, raw invitation for the reader to come in and explore my imagination is fairly scary for me so I have busied myself with so much else.

Every day I wake up afraid that I won't be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.

I always think the insecurity is going to go away, but it's always there. Only bad writers think they're good.

I try not to think too much about an audience when I'm writing the first draft of a book - at that stage, the prospect of anyone reading what I've written would be enough to scare me into setting my laptop on fire.

Every word I write I suspect the next day.

I've never written a novel before, and part of the reason I haven't is I was worried about getting 50,000 words into a book and realizing I'd made a mistake on word three that would mean throwing everything out.