Donald McKay Quotes

I used to get up and write every day, even if I wasn't working on a specific thing. Now, when I have a thing I'm in the middle of, I do that, but when I'm not, time can go by when I'm not writing at all.

I write every day. I don't have a writing schedule. I write when I feel like it. Fortunately, I feel like it all the time. I am writing for hours. I do like to write in the morning. I start after breakfast, like 9 o'clock, and I'll write till lunch, about 1. And after lunch, I just have fun.

Don't force yourself to write. Some people can write a novel in a few months, whereas for others it can take over a year. I'm lucky to be one of the former - but, even so, if I'm not in the mood to write, I won't. I'll go off, do something else and come back to it when I'm ready.

Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.

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

Most important of all, there is no right or wrong way to write - there's only what works for you. I was taught to write every day, but I know a writer (a bestseller at that!) who only writes on weekends.

The hardest part is making the time to write. Not finding the time to write, mind you. Making.

I don't really get into a writing routine until March or April, when I'll write a few hundred words a day, often in a cafe in the morning after the school run.

I try to write every day, preferably first thing in the morning. Of course, there are days when something happens to interfere with this ideal schedule. Then I try to find time later in the day. I usually work at home, but sometimes, for a change I'll go to a library or a cafe. And I like to read poetry before I sit down to write.

People always ask, 'How do you write so many books?' And I say, I work a lot. I work six or seven days a week.

I sit down at my desk pretty early in the morning and write all day until about 4 or 5 p.m.

For any writers at all, read everything you can and then put your butt in the chair and write. That's all there is to it.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

I've been known to write 10 pages a day for 10 days running before I take a breath. I am not a disciplined writer. I'm one of those people who laughingly call themselves inspirational writers, which basically means someone who has no control over their own creative process.

Writing - not being a writer with interesting habits - gets priority.

I write about five thousand words a day, when working on a book, about three thousand a day if I'm writing a short story. I take long periods off between projects, when I read a lot, garden, and think about the next book or stories.

I like writing. I get cranky when I can't. Yes, I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

You always need that spark of imagination. Sometimes I'm midway through a book before it happens. However, I don't wait for the muse to descend, I sit down every day and I work when I'm not delivering lambs on the farm.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

I'm not a disciplined writer.

I'm not a compulsive writer. I wish I could be compulsive about something. I have no regular writing routine.

But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.

My only ritual is to just sit down and write, write every day.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

I start writing at 7.30 A.M. and write till noon. I've never written a single word after 5.00 P.M.