Robert Pinsky Quotes

During the day, if I don't have any other commitments, I'm usually at my desk writing, revising, or researching anywhere from four to six hours.

I'm a morning person because I learned to write my novels while still practicing law. I would get to the office at 6:30 a.m. and write until other people arrived, around 9. Now I still do that. I start at 6:30 or 7, and I'll write until 11, then take an hour off, then work until about 2 p.m. By then my brain has had enough.

I get up around 8 o'clock, which gives me enough time to walk dogs and feed chickens and horses. Then I get to work in my home office upstairs, and basically, I don't stop until I've written 2,000 words and/or the Stephen Colbert show is over.

A lot of '2112' was written in the back seat of a car and in cold dressing rooms while on tour in northern Ontario.

There was a little nook on Air Force Two that contained the vice presidential seal, and I would sort of wedge myself in there and grade papers on the floor.

You do have to kind of sit down and try to write, because it's not the easiest thing when you're off and on planes. I'm sure if you're always on a bus, it's a little bit easier.

I don't procrastinate because I love the English language and the process of storytelling, and I'm always curious to see what will come to me next. If you procrastinate a lot, you might be one who loves having written, but doesn't so much like writing.

I need to write, and I can't write when I'm on the road.

One word after another. That's the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it's the only way to do it. So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

I never would start writing before midnight and I would finish at, like, seven in the morning.

Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph. Until you get to page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety - it's the job.

I try to write every day. I don't beat myself up about word counts, or how many hours are ticking by on the clock before I'm allowed to go and do something else. I just try to keep a hand in and work every single day, even if there are other demands or I'm on a book tour or have the flu or something, because then I keep my unconscious engaged with the book. Then I'm always a little bit writing, no matter what else I'm doing.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits. That's it in a nutshell ... In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative.

My way of working was different years ago. I used to wait until an idea came to me. Now I go half-way to meet it, though I don't know whether I find it any the quicker.

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

I had to educate him that there was no such thing as writer's block, that writers write when they write, and when they don't, they don't.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

Seventy percent of a first draft is garbage and 30 percent is gold, but you have to write 100 percent to get that 30.

Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

I don't believe in "writer's block". I try and deal with getting stuck by having more than one thing to work on at a time. And by knowing that even a hundred bad words that didn't exist before is forward progress.

I think the best advice I got was to not worry about what other people would think while you were working on your first draft. Focus on getting it out of your head. You can always edit the manuscript later.

(W)hat I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I'm feeling inspired. It's mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write.

I remember the few times that happened to me in writing, where you basically start writing and you look at the clock and six hours have gone by and you're, like, "Whoa! What the hell just happened?" And that piece ends up in the final product even though the final product is three years away. It doesn't get rewritten. It came out the right way. But that's happened to me so few times in my life.

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing-writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.

How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.