Dan Chaon Quotes

I don't wait for inspiration. I get up and write every day.

I love to write just about more than anything, but there are times I have to force myself to sit down and work. I want to play with my daughter or watch a movie with my husband or go outside on the nicest day of the year. But if writing is going to be your job, you have to treat it like a job.

I try and do 2,500 words a day, every day of the year.

You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not.

I am a highly disciplined person. I get up at seven every morning and, still in my pajamas, sit down at my desk where my checkered ring binders and my fountain pen are ready for use. I try to write two pages every day.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

I guess I write four or five hours a day, but I do it seven days a week. It's very disciplined, yes, but it's joy for me.

The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning.

I write seven days a week, starting at 4 o'clock in the morning, including Christmas.

I've always prided myself on my discipline as a writer. I do it like a job. I get up in the morning and go to my desk.

It's not easy keeping a diary. You have to be pretty committed.

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.

I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking.

Write a little bit every day, each day. Visit it, every day - in other words, show up for work.

I've never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

I think it takes a lot of desire because I think a lot of people who've never written books don't know quite how hard it is to stick with, to put in the amount of time and just make the commitment to just sit there every day and do it while everybody else is out having fun.

I used to write when I was in the mood or felt inspired. Anymore, I write whether I feel inspired or not. It's a discipline. So that's definitely different. It's part of maturing as a person and as a professional.

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even.

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.

My goal is two pages a day, five days a week. I never want to write, but I'm always glad that I have done it. After I write, I go to work at the bookstore.

I try to sit down at the typewriter four times a day, even if it's only five minutes, and write three sentences.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

I think I'm very focused and am quite a good multitasker, and I'm quite driven in knowing what my responsibilities are to my family and knowing what I've got to do to do that.

I'm all about getting the training. Don't roll out of bed and say, 'I can do this.'