Petina Gappah Quotes

I just want to start writing, whether or not any of it is useable or marketable.

I think novelists should be disciplined and self-imposed working hours. I work a lot, but I don't feel that I'm working. I always feel that there is a child in me, healthy, and I'm playing.

I'm just looking as always for something that's stimulating and I hope to find a good story that's a challenge, whether it's big or small. Or that it finds me. I don't have like a career plan. Maybe I should, but I don't.

I think that if writers are tempted to do other things, they ought to go do other things. They should not write if they don't feel like it. I say this as a competitor. I am not interested in encouraging people who are in competition with me.

That has to remain the principal reason for doing it, doesn't it? I know it's possible to write for money, and many very good writers have done so. But for me, it has to remain the principal thing that I actually want to do the writing.

I always write about subjects which attract me because if I didn't, it would be awful, a failure.

An audience is always warming but it must never be necessary to your work.

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

I do not go down and sit in front of the computer and make myself write; that's not my style.

I want to offer a word of encouragement to authors: You have to feel called to the message of your book enough that you want people to get that message. When you get to that place, your passion goes through the roof, and then the other stuff happens.

Write what you love and love what you write.

Everything in life is writable.

Write for pleasure and publish for money.

Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.

I don't get competitive, really. So I don't know. If I'm excited about something, hopefully someone will think, "Oh right, you should do this." And that's great. I'm not being very articulate about this. I just don't want to do stuff if I'm going to feel bummed out and uninspired.

For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation-the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing-is essential for high levels of creativity.

Eh, it's not that attractive to have a plan. I know that if I ever feel that I need to make a funny movie, I’ll figure out how to write one. I’ll get it done. If I ever get some ambition, I’m gonna get some shit done.

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.

If you think art is a competitive forum, then you're going to stop doing it if you're not good. But if it's not competitive, it's something that you'll keep doing.

There is no end in creativity. Hence, to strive towards an end result is a fool's errand. Set goals, make music and paint pictures, but know that the crux of your happiness balances delicately on the wings of the act of creativity itself. Not at the finish line.

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?

Generally, I find that when you're writing and having fun with the writing, that energy and dynamism is going to come out in the text one way or another.

You have to rely on whatever sparks you have inside.

I am a dedicated madman, and that becomes its own training. If you can't resist, if the typewriter is like candy to you, you train yourself for a lifetime. Every single day of your life, some wild new thing to be done. You write to please yourself. You write for the joy of writing. Then your public reads you and it begins to gather around your selling a potato peeler in an alley, you know. The enthusiasm, the joy itself draws me. So that means every day of my life I've written. When the joy stops, I'll stop writing.

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, it's self-consciousness.