Ann Turner Quotes

Anybody who likes writing a book is an idiot. Because it's impossible; it's like having a homework assignment every stinking day until it's done. And by the time you get it in, it's done and you're sitting there reading it, and you realize the 12,000 things you didn't do. I mean, writing isn't fun. It's never been fun.

I huff and puff and struggle with every sentence, paragraph and page - sometimes every word as well.

I'm impossible when a book is taking shape. Well, actually, I'm despicable.

Oh how I wish I could be as obsessive as Carrie from 'Homeland' when I'm writing a book! That would save me a lot of trouble during the revision process.

I find writing extraordinarily difficult and not very pleasurable, though I find having done it very pleasurable. I won't lie about that.

I try very hard to write the best book I possibly can, every time.

I envy people who write easily. I enjoy the process, but it's not easeful for me.

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.

I find writing really difficult - definitely the most difficult of all the things I do.

I've tried writing. Two days later I'd go visit it and say, Jesus Christ, who wrote this crap?

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.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle.

Writing is hard - writing is the hardest.

Writing has been as difficult for me as for people who don't like to write and as little fun.

Each time, I think I'm never going to write another book. It never gets easier.

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire.

Writing has never been that simple for me.

It took me ten years to write a proper story. I floundered about trying to shape something, counting on the 'feeling' I had as I wrote, only to discover upon rereading my work that the feeling had disappeared, and what remained was an empty shell.

When I was working on 'Freddie,' I had been trying to write it on a computer for many, many years, but that delete button just won't let anything go forward.

I was writing fiction, but not finishing fiction.

I have always found writing very difficult.

Once I have a book in my head, I write progressive drafts fast and obsessively and have trouble sleeping.

I have a high guilt quotient. A poem can go through as many as 50 or 60 drafts. It can take from a day to two years-or longer.