Jerry Pournelle Quotes

Writing takes a lot of patience. It usually takes me a year to write a book. One time, it took me 14 years to write a book, not that I worked on it every day.

I tell my students that with a 200-page novel, you are going to write 100 pages that don't make the final cut. See it as an opportunity, although it took me a while to enjoy that 'lost in the woods' feeling.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

I wrote the first draft of 'Plan B' the summer after I turned 21.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something-anything-down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft-you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.

It takes an awful lot of time for me to write anything. I have endless drafts, one after another; and I try out 50, 75, or a hundred variations on a single line sometimes. I work on the process of refining low-grade ore. I get maybe a couple of nu ggets of gold out of 50 tons of dirt. It is tough for me. No, I am not inspired.

I have seldom written a story, long or short, that I did not have to write and rewrite. There are single stories of mine that have taken me ten or twelve years to get written.

I don't feel I write fast. I write in longhand and do so much revision. On the page, it's so old-fashioned. I could write a whole novel on scrap paper, scribbles and things. I keep looking at it and something develops. For me, using a word processor would mean staring at a screen for too many hours.

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

The writing process, it's too mysterious to try and describe.

Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.

I started seriously applying myself to writing fiction immediately after I finished graduate school. By 'seriously,' I mean that, instead of noodling along on a story, finishing it or not as the mood struck me, I set out to complete what I started, to polish it to the best of my ability, and to send out the finished story.

I'm not one of these 'the characters write themselves; the story just fell out of me' kind of writers. Wish it was like that.

Longhand isn't well suited to my way of writing. I tend to end up with dozens of pages of crossings-out and margin scribbles just to find one good paragraph, and it's easy to lose your train of thought, working like that.

It takes me a very, very long time to write a story, to write a piece of fiction, whatever you call the fiction that I write. I just go about it blindly, feeling my way towards what it has to be.

I hate first drafts, and it never gets easier. People always wonder what kind of superhero power they'd like to have. I wanted the ability for someone to just open up my brain and take out the entire first draft and lay it down in front of me so I can just focus on the second, third and fourth drafts.

In my office I have a sign that says, 'Don't think. Just write!' and that's how I work. I try not to worry about each word, or even each sentence or paragraph. For me, stories evolve. Writing is a process. I rewrite each sentence, each manuscript, many times.

I like to have a title before I start writing.

Completing any writing project, particularly a novel, is a daunting prospect. Many people become frozen by the prospect. Others keep waiting for the right time. Some wait for the spark of inspiration. Even experienced writers find it is easier to do anything other than actually write.

I love the structural part of the writing process.

For me, most writing consists of siphoning out useless pre-story matter, cutting and cutting and cutting, what seems to be endless rewriting, and what is entailed in all that is patience, and waiting, and false starts, and dead ends, and really, in a way, nerve.

Kids think you just sit down and start writing. I always tell them you never do that.

You have to have a somewhat cold heart to be a writer.

If the story wasn't overly long, I'd type it out. And I'd carry it around with me for a week and jot notes on it, and then I'd throw it away and do another one.