Doris Lessing Quotes

The writing comes first for me. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not the Internet or signings or merchandise, or 'the career.' Everything begins and ends with the writing for me, and I build my entire life around sitting my butt down 365 days a year.

Becoming a writer is not a 'career decision' like becoming a doctor or a policeman. You don't choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you're not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days.

If you are a writer, Saturday and Sunday don't mean anything.

In terms of people who want to be writers, I wish more people knew how much work it was.

I'm a workmanlike writer. I show up every day and treat it like a job. The old rule that writing is like any other job, the first rule is that you must show up. I'm at the keyboard from 9 to 4 every day.

The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.

When I'm working on a novel, I work 70-hour weeks.

There's a danger in romanticizing what it means to be a writer. Because what it really means is hard, hard work. It means tearing your hair out. Feeling like your head is about to explode.

Life being so short, and the possible books to write so many, it's good to function by night as well as by day; but would anybody become a writer if they realised at the outset what the working hours were?

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work my butt off, and that I make myself write as much as I can. Writer's block is a luxury I can't afford. I'm a professional writer, which means that I put my butt in the chair each day, and I write. Simple as that.

I just write from dawn to dusk.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

As a writer, I've always been somebody who's been productive and hustled hard.

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.

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.

But, somewhere in there, I did have the thought that this really fits in with my thinking about what I wanted to do; with what has to be done by a writer in order to stay alive as a writer.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.

It's a job. When I'm writing I'm going to do it five to six days a week and I'm going to work for four to six hours a day. There's no magic writing fairy. It's just hard work.

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

All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a 'rate of production,' for whom it's a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year.

At first, I spend about four hours a day writing. Toward the end of a book, I spend up to 16 hours a day on it, because all I want to do is make it good and get it done.

I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.

A one-hundred-thousand-word novel might take a year or several years, and then you just come to 'The End' one day. But it takes hundreds of days to get to 'The End.' As a writer, you have to put in those hundreds of days.